


The Guardian in Spite of Herself

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: The Way of the Apartment Manager [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassination Attempt(s), Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Ethical Dilemmas, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Mentors, Mission Fic, Moral Dilemmas, Ninja, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, Pre-Canon, Psychological Trauma, Revolutionary Rhetoric, Teamwork, Uchiha Massacre, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2005-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-04-09 00:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 67,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4327644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The reward for a job well done is a bigger job. In this case, Ayakawa Yukiko's new job is a lot more complicated than anyone expected. The Uchiha massacre and its aftermath, in the world of "The Way of the Apartment Manager."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to [The Way of the Apartment Manager](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1120050/chapters/2257065). It's still an AU story. In the canon timeline, Yukiko was one of the nameless casualties of the Kyuubi's attack... but in this world, she lived. Eight years later, the effects are beginning to snowball. [Asuka Kureru](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru) suggested the idea that became the nucleus of this story, when she wondered if Sasuke might also end up as a tenant in Yukiko's apartment building. I've thrown a LOT of other stuff on top, but that was the original spark. Thanks, Asuka!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the First, in which Sarutobi Hokage-sama applies a guilt-trip, Sasuke does not want to be helped, Yukiko disapproves of the Uchiha clan's financial organization skills, Naga enjoys a nice day on the Grass Country border, and a wild cliffhanger appears!

The Uchiha clan didn't impinge much on Ayakawa Yukiko's life.

She was aware that Naruto had an Uchiha in his academy class -- the kid liked to complain about jerks who thought they were the greatest thing ever -- but beyond reminding Naruto that even geniuses with powerful bloodline limits could be defeated, she didn't pay much attention. Her friend Naga dropped by now and then to gripe about Uchiha Tsukihime, the chuunin who had become her default mission partner, but the two girls were slowly learning to get along and Naga didn't care about Tsukihime's family anyway. Yukiko herself only called on the Uchiha if there was a problem in her neighborhood or building that she couldn't sort out herself. They came, asked a few questions, wrote up a bill, and quietly removed the disturbance.

Then Uchiha Itachi removed his clan.

In one night, a boy not yet fifteen years old murdered over a hundred people, including his own parents. A few scattered clan members were away from Konoha on missions, but when Intelligence sent messenger birds to notify them, no replies came back. Itachi had been an Anbu captain. He'd had access to classified assignments. Nobody knew how he had done it, but clearly he had taken care of _everyone_.

Oddly enough, though, Itachi left one survivor: his younger brother, Sasuke.

Sasuke, who'd seen his parents murdered in front of him. Sasuke, who had nowhere to live but the very house in which his family had died. Sasuke, who just happened to be Naruto's age and in the same class at the academy...

Sarutobi Hokage-sama paused in his explanation of events. "You seem upset with me."

"I'm upset about what you're leading up to," Yukiko said, folding her arms. "Just because Naruto and I get along doesn't mean I'm going to start taking in orphans right and left. I do run a business, you know, and I'm away on missions at least every other month."

Sarutobi-sama steepled his fingers and frowned across his desk at Yukiko. "Yukiko-san, I think you misunderstand me. Many families would be happy to take Sasuke into their homes; however, I doubt he wishes to be reminded of his own family. It should be much easier to talk him into renting an apartment, which he won't have to share with others.

"But -- and this is very important, Yukiko-san -- he should not be left completely on his own, no matter how much he might like to be. Even if you don't take an active role in his life, I'm sure Naruto will."

Yukiko pictured that: a traumatized, unstable, prickly boy... and Naruto. Who had a good heart and usually meant well, but who, despite her best efforts, still hadn't learned more than the most rudimentary social skills. Who had no sympathy for people who moped or brooded, since he dealt just fine with his own problems. And who, assuming Sasuke was the boy in his academy class, already disliked his potential neighbor.

She winced. "I really don't think this is a good idea, Sarutobi-sama."

"Nonsense," he said, looking away and lighting his pipe. "They're good children and you won't even need to be directly involved once you turn over his keys. What could possibly go wrong?"

Yukiko bit her tongue, counted to twenty, and carefully didn't accuse the Third Hokage of insanity. "Right. Send him around tomorrow morning and I'll let him choose an apartment."

\---------------

Sasuke glared at the off-white walls as the woman talked about the apartment. It was the third one she'd shown him, each one higher in the building than the last, and he could tell she didn't want to be here either. He almost liked that. It was better than crying over him, hugging him, and calling him 'you poor dear' the way the fake mother did. But he still didn't like her.

He didn't need an apartment. He already had a house.

The medic-nin said it would remind him too much of his parents and Itachi.

Of course it would remind him. Why else did they think he wanted to stay there?

The woman sighed and thumped her hand against the doorframe, calling his attention back to the room. "Okay, so you don't like this one either. I have one apartment left -- you either take it or I tell Sarutobi Hokage-sama that you'd rather stay with your temporary foster family."

"I don't need an apartment and I don't need a foster family," Sasuke told her. "I already have a home."

"Actually," the woman said, "you don't. Hokage's orders -- you're not allowed to live completely on your own. Either you live here and I check up on you once a week, or you go to the foster home."

Sasuke glared at her.

The woman sighed again and ran her hands through her blue-green hair. "Why do I get all the problem kids?"

Sasuke scowled. He wasn't a problem. If people left him alone, he'd be fine. He'd get strong and kill Ita-- he'd rip _that man_ to pieces, just like he deserved. All this fussing was just getting in his way.

But... if he _had_ to have someone watch him, better this woman than the foster family. He couldn't stand the way the fake mother cooed at him or the way the little kids followed him around all the time. They didn't understand about being shinobi. They tried to stop him from training and getting strong. If he said yes now and pretended he was happy, maybe he could go home in a few months. Until then, at least he'd have his own room so he could study and train.

"Fine," Sasuke said. "I'll take the last apartment."

"Without even looking at it?"

"Yes."

The woman looked like she wanted to say something important, but then she shook her head, the way Father used to do when he thought Sasuke needed to learn something. Sasuke dug his nails into his palms and scratched the scabs open again. "The apartment's on the top floor in the back, number 7-K," the woman said. "Let's go to my office -- I'll give you the keys and we'll talk payment. Who's handling your accounts?"

Sasuke shrugged. He hadn't asked. It wouldn't matter if he could stay home, where he could charge food, clothes, and weapons to the clan account. But he didn't know if that worked for apartments. No Uchiha had lived outside the clan district for ages.

The woman raked her hands through her hair again and muttered something Sasuke couldn't quite hear. "Okay then. Do you know what bank your family used?"

That he knew; he'd followed Itachi once to see what his brother did with his paychecks. "Falling Leaf Savings and Loan."

"Good. We'll head there now and figure out the status of your clan accounts and who has signatory access. Don't scowl at me," she added, rolling her eyes at Sasuke. "The sooner we get this straightened out, the sooner I'll leave you alone."

Sasuke shrugged again and followed her downstairs.

\---------------

The Uchiha clan wasn't as wealthy as Yukiko had expected, at least not in any immediately useful way. They'd invested most of their earnings back into the police organization or into real estate, until they'd owned almost the entire district in which they'd lived. Since Sasuke had no claim to the police -- it was a government agency of sorts and there had been a few non-Uchiha members to inherit that mess -- and since nobody would want to move into a district so recently defiled, he was left with a modestly sized clan account, dozens of minor individual accounts, miscellaneous small investments, and land that would be nothing but a massive tax drain. Furthermore, all the Uchiha had named other clan members as executors of their wills. There was literally _nobody_ who had any legal responsibility for the money... except Sasuke, who obviously had no idea how to manage any of it.

Setting that mess into some kind of order required someone to claim cosignatory authority until he turned sixteen or became a genin, whichever came first. "Do you have anyone in mind?" Yukiko asked the boy.

He shrugged minimally and went back to glaring out the bank's window at the busy midday streets. He was trying for an intimidating expression, Yukiko thought, but his inherent cuteness got in the way and made him look lost and upset instead. He was a lot skinnier than Naruto; his loose shorts and his wide-sleeved, high-collared clan shirt made his arms and legs look like pale twigs. His black hair was a ragged mess, sticking up in the back and pulled into his eyes by its own weight in front. It was oddly endearing, and made Yukiko want to whip out a pair of scissors and a comb and straighten him up.

She sighed. She'd spent a lot of time wishing Naruto talked less, but right now she'd give anything to be dealing with the kid instead of this boy. Getting answers out of Sasuke was like pulling kunai out of stone jutsu traps.

"Fine. Give me cosignatory authority and I'll organize this so you're earning money instead of losing it. We can set it up so you draw a monthly allowance, and if you ever need more cash, just bring me the forms."

The boy jerked his head around and scowled. "It's _my_ money."

"Yes, I know," Yukiko said, drawing on her rapidly diminishing store of patience. "This will be a legal fiction. I don't care what you spend or what you buy, once I straighten up the accounts and teach you how to handle them, but we'll pretend so the bank will be happy."

"Fine."

She signed in the spaces the bank representative had marked, slid the forms to Sasuke for him to sign, and carried the papers across the room to a clerk. Once she had complete reports on all current Uchiha holdings and accounts, as well as a booklet explaining the bank's hours and regulations, she left as quickly as possible. The sullen boy trailed behind her, trying to look like he wasn't following -- oh no, he just happened to be walking in the same direction she was.

Yukiko wondered if arrogance was bred into the Uchiha like the Sharingan. It might explain a lot.

On the other hand, she decided half an hour later, the foster family's attitudes might well put anyone into a bad mood. The woman -- the same Tani Midori who'd driven Naruto out of her home nearly two years ago -- fawned over Sasuke as if he were a combination of a long-lost prince come to grace her home, and a delicate, injured bird. Yukiko had taken less than two minutes to figure out that the boy hated being touched; Midori constantly hugged him and rested her hand on his shoulder.

Yukiko revised her opinion of Sasuke upward when he didn't snap and scream at the woman. She collected his small suitcase of clothes and necessities, handed it to him -- she was fairly sure he'd accuse her of insulting him if she carried it herself -- and hustled him away from the tooth-rotting woman and her collection of hero-worshiping children.

"Was Tani-san like that the whole time?" Yukiko asked.

"Yes." Sasuke switched his grip on the suitcase so he held it with both hands; he leaned to the left to compensate for its weight. His scowl shifted into a more neutral expression of determination.

Yukiko patted herself on the back for letting him carry the luggage himself. This boy was nothing like Naruto. Well, no, be fair; the kid was touchy and proud in his own way, just not quite to this extreme. But anyway, she thought she was learning the pattern for dealing with Sasuke. This might actually work out without any bloodshed.

Then she remembered Naruto didn't know that Sasuke now lived across the hall from him.

Oh, _shit_.

\---------------

The border between Fire Country and Grass Country wasn't the world's most comfortable place in midsummer -- way too much sun, too many bugs trying to suck your blood, and you could hardly see past your hands in the swaying, six-foot-high tassel grass -- but Tonoike Naga liked it anyway. She flopped down on her back beside the muddy stream, spread her arms wide, and looked at the sky. If she lay perfectly still and focused just so, she could trick herself into feeling like she was falling upward into that infinite, searing blue...

"Stop doing that and pay attention, snake-tongue," Tsukihime hissed. "You're supposed to be on watch."

"Bite me, airhead." Naga gave up on meditation and flicked her fingers in Tsukihime's general direction. "We're in the middle of nowhere, we didn't tell anyone where we were going, nobody's going to find us, and it's a beautiful day. Get over yourself and relax."

"If you hadn't read my message--"

"But I did," Naga said, "and here I am. I don't care what top-secret Uchiha clan business is going on. We're partners. Can't get rid of me that easily." She grinned at Tsukihime.

Tsukihime heaved a long-suffering sigh and pushed through the tawny tassel grass to the narrow strip of lush green that hugged the stream bank. She sat delicately beside Naga, arranging her ridiculous pleated skirt to cover her thighs. Then she unzipped the red legwarmers she always tied onto her sandals, kicked off the shoes, and wriggled her toes in the dirt. "You're right. It's a beautiful day. And it's less boring to wait with you than by myself."

"Exactly," Naga said. They would have left Hidden Grass within a day or two anyway, she reminded herself, so she couldn't say Tsukihime's mysterious clan message had stolen _that_ much of her visit with Kafunnokaze. It wasn't fair to take out her irritation on her partner. She just hated waiting. She especially hated waiting when she didn't know what she was waiting for. "It's been five days. When will your freaky-eye people come and explain things?"

Tsukihime sighed again and shook her head in mock sorrow; her long, golden-brown hair swayed back and forth like the grass. "They'll come when they come. The code was serious trouble so I doubt we're the only ones waiting for contact, and unless you screwed up big time, our camp shouldn't be obvious."

"Unless I screwed up?" Naga propped herself up on her elbows and twisted her neck to stare at Tsukihime. "You're the one holding the fuck-off genjutsu."

"Fuck-off? That's an interesting description," a strange voice said.

The girls scrambled to their feet and stared. A short, wiry boy -- Naga pegged him as a few years younger than she was, and then changed her mind when she met his eyes -- stood calmly across the shallow stream. Uchiha, no question about that, not with his dull, raven-black eyes, his sharp-boned face, and that weird sense of "I'm better than you and we both know it" that everyone in that clan seemed to give off. He was wearing black, and had no clan crest or forehead protector visible.

"Itachi-san!" Tsukihime smiled and sat down again, hurrying to put her sandals and legwarmers back on. "So, what's up in Konoha? It must be pretty serious for you to get sent after me!" Naga agreed. Uchiha Itachi was the clan heir, as well as an Anbu captain (well, she thought he was a captain -- it was hard to pry Anbu details out of her father), so for him to be sent after a relative as minor as Tsukihime... Naga fought to keep her face blank and her body still. Something about this was fishy.

"The message was for clan eyes only," Itachi said. "Why is your partner here?"

"I read the message, and I don't let teammates do stupid things alone," Naga said before Tsukihime could answer. Tsukihime kicked her ankle. Naga ignored her; she was watching Itachi. It wasn't obvious, but his mouth was tight and his posture deliberately loose, the kind of stance that said he was expecting a fight. And he hadn't answered Tsukihime's question. She glanced at his eyes again, trying to read his intentions.

"Wasteful," Itachi said, and his eyes _changed_.

Naga had half a second to wonder what the _fuck_ he was doing with blades in his eyes instead of the typical Sharingan commas, before her world crashed into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Sunday, July 12, 2015**
> 
> So hey, I am finally getting around to editing and cross-posting this story. Yes, this does mean I have resumed work on chapter 16, which I will hopefully have done... eh... let's go with 'soonish' in a probably futile effort to avoid jinxing myself.
> 
> As you may or may not notice, there are some minor changes from the old version posted on ff.net. That's because "Guardian" (unlike "Apartment Manager") is still a living artifact and I therefore feel free to revise it as I go. The majority of the changes will be stuff like replacing dashes with periods and other sentence structure tweaks, because I dislike my habitual punctuation from ten years ago. The other changes will mostly be minor clarifications or elaborations, plus a name tweak or two. The plot isn't going to shift.
> 
> I'll post old chapters periodically while I work on chapter 16. The exact frequency of those posts will depend on how fast that new writing goes. Once I catch up to myself things will slow down again, but "Guardian" is now at the top of my to-do list (barring exchanges and stuff) so hopefully I will be able to make significant progress before I inevitably bog down again.
> 
> Wish me luck!
> 
> \--Liz


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Second, in which Naga improvises, Sasuke continues to indulge in deeply worrying behavior, Naruto barges in with some news, and Yukiko sticks her nose into places it doesn't technically belong.

"This is the world of the grasping moon," Itachi said, his voice echoing through Naga's bruised mind. "Here, reality is what I say it is. For interfering, you will stay here and be dismembered by katana for three days."

The first sword stabbed into her shoulder and dragged downward, tearing muscles from tendon and bone. Naga closed her eyes -- her _false_ eyes. This was genjutsu. The pain wasn't real, no matter how much her nerves tried to tell her it was. This dark, echoing place didn't feel quite like the private hells Yukiko made during training, but the mind-fogging confusion was the same, and Itachi had given it away. 'Reality is what I say it is,' he said. That was genjutsu, fooling the mind.

Naga gathered her will, focused, and lashed out against the bounds of the illusion. "Kai!"

The darkness didn't waver. Neither did Itachi's calm, confident expression. A sword pierced her gut, and Naga bit back a scream. Right. So she couldn't crack the genjutsu. She still wasn't going to break. She set her mind on one thing -- _this isn't real_ \-- and repeated the dispelling over and over, hour after hour, until nothing was left but pain, Itachi's dispassionate regard, and fear for Tsukihime left to face him without a partner, until only the hoarse refrain of 'kaikaikaikaikai' held her together.

Light scorched her eyes.

Naga fell to the ground, limp and shaking, her mind telling her body she was hacked into sashimi and tired beyond endurance. "No," she said, as dry grass crunched in the distance. "Genjutsu." She could collapse later. Naga gathered her will again, but this time she focused on her body. She shoved herself up on shaking arms and looked for her partner.

Tsukihime was leading Itachi away in a giant spiral, bleeding from sword-cuts on her arms and legs, and not looking at his eyes. Itachi feinted left -- she stumbled back, her slashed legwarmer catching under her sandal. She rolled as she fell; Itachi reversed his swing and sliced down like lightning. Tsukihime twisted -- the short sword glanced across her arm instead of her throat -- and scrambled up at the last moment. Fresh blood ran down past her elbow. She flung a kunai at Itachi's face, and retreated.

Naga cursed and tried to move her legs. She had to reach her pack. Tsukihime was playing for time -- Naga recognized that weird, defensive variation on drunken fighting, designed to fool even a mastered Sharingan -- but Itachi was toying with her. Naga could see it. Tsukihime could see it too. Tsukihime could see _her_ , and was shifting her retreat into a line, keeping Itachi's focus away from Naga.

Her legs shook, her elbows collapsed, and Naga crashed back to the ground. Fuck. There was nothing wrong with her, she knew that, but she couldn't move. She couldn't support her own weight, couldn't force her legs to work. Her partner was counting on her and she was going to _fail_. Her tongue curled out as she hissed in frustrated rage.

Then she felt like kicking herself.

Quickly, she shot her arms across the open ground and into the tassel grass. That didn't need the joints that refused to work. She could do that in her sleep. She opened her pack by touch, fighting to keep her fingers from shaking or falling into limp curls of flesh. Where was it? She never went anywhere without-- ah. There.

Naga pulled in her arms and fumbled with the string around the scroll. She could slice it with a kunai, but she didn't think she could twist her body enough to reach her thigh holster. She stilled her shaking long enough to find the right loop of the knot, and pulled. The scroll rolled open on the ground.

To her left, Tsukihime screamed.

Naga bit her thumb open, slashed blood across her signature, and slammed the scroll and her bleeding hand against the earth. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" She closed her eyes. Kami, let her call reach the right bird!

Mist and smoke washed over her, and a deep voice cleared its throat. "Attack or fly?"

Naga let out her breath in relief and curled into a ball as best she could, clutching the scroll. "Fly, Kuroba-sama. Save Tsukihime." A huge, scaly foot closed around her, and then, with an abrupt jerk and backdraft, she was airborne. Wind blurred her eyes. Something sharp whistled past her and sliced into her calf, but she was past caring. She couldn't really feel her damn leg anyway, couldn't feel anything more than jelly and relief. They were safe. The Uchiha never learned to summon, thought it was beneath them. No way Itachi could catch them now.

"The straw-hair girl is missing half a leg," the raven croaked dryly. "If you want her to reach Konoha alive, you might want to do something."

"Fuck." Naga looked across to Kuroba's other foot; Tsukihime's other wounds were shallow, but her right leg... Naga swallowed. Two inches past her knee, Tsukihime's leg stopped. Blood fell through the air in uneven streams. " _Fuck_ ," she said again for good measure.

She never figured out where she found the strength to shove her arm through the howling wind of Kuroba's flight and clamp her hand on Tsukihime's leg. She knew precisely two fire jutsu -- the little curl of flame that all Leaf-nin learned to light campfires, and a white-hot glove of fire that Kakashi had taught her during her chuunin exam. She used the second jutsu on her partner.

Blood boiled against Naga's fingers. Tsukihime's skin cracked and bubbled under her grip. She caught a faint whiff of roasting meat and offered silent thanks for the wind that tore the smell away. After ten seconds, she dropped the jutsu and slowly, slowly pulled her arm back in, shrinking tendons and slotting segmented bones back into a more human configuration. She wasn't a medic-nin, didn't know how much blood Tsukihime had lost or how much the burn might shock her partner's system. She'd done the best she could.

Naga drew a deep breath. One more thing. "Hospital roof," she shouted at Kuroba. The raven croaked his agreement.

Naga let go. This time she welcomed the darkness.

\---------------

The apartment was only one room, a bathroom, and a closet, but that was all right. Sasuke didn't need anything more. He cooked the instant ramen the blue-haired woman left for him, used the towel she lent him, and slept on borrowed sheets. The next morning, he went home to fill another two suitcases with clothes, linens, and some of his father's weapons.

The woman caught him as he walked through the ground floor hallway. "You're too late for the academy and Sarutobi Hokage-sama said you're excused from lessons this week. Where are you going?"

"Home," he said.

She leaned against the doorway of her office. "Picking up clothes and stuff? That makes sense -- hang on a minute and I'll come with you."

He didn't want her to come with him. He didn't need people watching him and asking how he felt. Why couldn't anybody see that? Sasuke walked out of the building and down the street, and had almost reached the corner when the woman loped up from behind.

"Nice try, but you have to be a lot sneakier if you want to fool me," she said, and stuffed her hands into her jacket.

Sasuke clenched his hands. If he couldn't even hide from this woman, how was he supposed to get strong enough to kill Itachi? She had on a forehead-protector, but she was dressed like a civilian and she ran an apartment building. She couldn't be a good shinobi.

He walked faster. She kept up.

The shortest route across town went by the ninja academy. Sasuke didn't realize that until he heard Iruka-sensei yelling and turned to see what his teacher was angry about this time. His class was outside in one of the practice fields, hurling kunai at painted targets. Iruka-sensei was off to one side, bandaging a brown-haired girl's hand. The girl was sniffling and wiping her face, not staying calm like a true shinobi. Sasuke felt the thin calluses on his fingers, the beginning of a shinobi's hands, and turned away. He wanted a kunai to plunge into Itachi's eye. He wanted to be back in time, staying after lessons to practice his aim. He wanted to be further back, watching Itachi dance in midair, guiding knives to impossible targets.

His fingers dug into his palms again.

Finally they reached the Uchiha district, and Sasuke paused at the mouth of the street. Just a week ago, his great-uncle had sat on a bench outside his grocery store, dozing in the summer sun. His mother's cousin Eriko had arranged kimono outside her dress shop. Other people, more distant relatives, had walked through the streets, laughing, drinking lemonade, eating ice cream in huge bites before it melted in the heat.

The street was clean now. Someone had washed the blood from the walls and the pavement, and swept up the reddish mud. One window was broken, though, and the awning over Eriko-san's shop was torn and flapping in the breeze. The police should have fixed that. They never let the district look shabby; it reflected badly on the organization and the clan. His cousin Raijiro had told him that last year when Sasuke had watched the police sweeping broken glass from the street and nailing flowerboxes back onto a windowsill.

"Which way to your house?" the woman asked. Her voice sounded too loud, since the only street noises were behind them. In front there was nothing but the wind rustling through leaves and over roofs, scattered chirps and calls from bird to bird, and the soft creak of wood as buildings settled.

Sasuke closed his eyes, trying to find the place he'd fallen into after Itachi left. It was cold there, but it was calm and clear and it let him think without wasting time on crying. Then he forced his hands open, to keep his fingers from cramping, and walked home.

\---------------

There was something wrong about the boy's self-possession, Yukiko thought as she followed him through the Uchiha district. He shouldn't be nearly this calm, not in the place where his entire family was murdered less than a week ago. He should have cried, or screamed, or refused to come back here. There should have been some reaction, something more than just a long, frozen moment and a barely audible hitch in his breathing.

She shadowed him two paces back, ready to step in if he collapsed or went nuts. But Sasuke walked steadily through the empty streets until he reached a large house on the edge of an open, grassy park with a large pond in its center. The Uchiha crest, a red and white fan, was painted on the courtyard wall. Sasuke stopped for a moment and stared at the symbol.

Yukiko followed his gaze and noticed a kunai stuck into the fan, as if thrown there in target practice. She looked back to the boy, wondering what it meant to him. He'd clenched his hands again, but he seemed so calm she almost didn't notice the trickle of blood seeping from between his fingers.

Not good. But at least it was a reaction.

"Hey," she said, stepping forward and lightly touching his left hand. "Let me bandage that."

Sasuke opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. He uncurled his fingers, slowly, and let Yukiko examine his hands. She hissed between her teeth. The boy had gouged his nails into his skin over and over, enough so his palms were a mess of partially scabbed furrows. How on earth did he keep from wincing at the pain?

She pulled a tube of ointment from her jacket and dabbed it onto his hands. Then she drew a kunai and sliced the bottoms of her pants to make bandages. This would've been a lot easier if she'd been wearing her chuunin vest, but that tended to confuse or intimidate her tenants -- not to mention it would blow the cover story she used on intelligence missions -- so she had learned to make do without. She wrapped the dark cotton around Sasuke's hands and tucked the ends underneath the loops. "There. That should hold until we get back."

The boy nodded.

"You know," Yukiko said, trying to keep her voice light, "you can use the yard behind the building for practice. If you have to hurt something, it's better not to hurt yourself."

"What do _you_ know?" Sasuke finally came to life, glaring at her like she was trying to kill him.

"You're not the only person in Konoha who's lost family," Yukiko snapped before she could think. Then she resisted the urge to smack herself, and tried to soften her words. "Of course, nobody's lost a whole clan before, and I don't think any clans turned on themselves like this, but still..." She trailed off. This wasn't going to help anything.

The boy closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them again, he'd found his way back to that eerie, dead calm. "I'm going to pack my things," he said, and started into the house.

Yukiko cursed under her breath and followed him again.

He found two travel packs in a closet under the stairs, laid them on his bed, and proceeded to fill them with clothes, towels, sheets, toothpaste, weapons, canned food, and other necessary things. That was fine; Yukiko approved of using what he already owned instead of wasting money on buying replacements. But he didn't pack any pictures, or the battered teddy bear she saw lying beside his bed. He didn't pack any of the obviously much-read books. He didn't pack any toys. That worried her.

Sasuke was only eight years old, just a few months older than Naruto. He was too young to be this controlled, this serious. Naruto had described the Uchiha in his class as stuck-up and quiet, but he admitted that the other boy had a good sense of humor and said that he was always running places instead of walking. Even his parents' death shouldn't have changed Sasuke this much. He should be grieving, not trying to cut out his heart.

As he gathered his things, Yukiko pulled them out of the packs, folded them properly, and stowed them in a more organized fashion. When he protested, she shrugged. "It will save time," she told him, "and if you watch what I'm doing, you'll learn how to pack better for next time." He scowled, but continued to toss things onto his bed.

When they finished, Yukiko shut the bags and swung the heavier one onto her shoulders. If she'd judged correctly, the other should be just light enough for the boy to lift. She didn't offer to help as he hoisted it, staggered for a moment under its weight, and then headed for the stairs. He didn't look back as they left the house.

The silence of the Uchiha district seemed to wrap around them as they walked. Yukiko found herself imagining it as a huge animal, roused from sleep and curious about the intruders, and she was grateful when they left the empty houses and the noise of daytime Konoha returned to normal levels. As they crossed town, Sasuke's expression lost some of its unnatural stillness and slid back toward sullen determination. He shifted his hands on the pack straps, trying to keep the canvas from biting into his palms.

That was better. If she had anything to say about it -- which Yukiko presumed she did, now -- Sasuke wouldn't be going back to the Uchiha district anytime soon. It was obviously no good for him, and that edged stillness couldn't be healthy.

"Hey," she said as she unlocked the front door of her building, "come to my office before you drag that upstairs. I want to bandage your hands properly."

The boy followed silently. He dropped his pack just inside her door and looked around the small office, clearly unimpressed. Yukiko waved him toward the chairs against the side wall, in front of her desk. Then she unlocked a file cabinet drawer and pulled out the first aid kit. It was fully stocked. She was never sure just what sort of trouble Naruto might get into, and it was best to be prepared.

She was nearly finished wrapping Sasuke's hands when her office door slammed open and an orange whirlwind swept in. "Hey, hey, Yukiko-neechan! Guess what! We had target practice today, and Iruka-sensei says I did third-best in the class! And just now, Shinnin and Sakura-chan and I saw a huge crow -- like the ones Naga summons -- fly over the town to the hospital, and it looked like it was carrying something! Do you think it was Naga? And--"

Naruto paused to draw a breath, and noticed Sasuke. "Hey! That's the bastard from my class -- he's been out all week! What's he doing here, Yukiko-neechan?"

Yukiko wasn't listening. Her hands wrapped the bandage and mechanically tucked away the loose ends while thoughts raced through her mind. A giant raven, carrying something to the hospital. Naga. Naga's partner Uchiha Tsukihime. Naga out on a mission, with Tsukihime. Uchiha Itachi, killing his clan. Itachi, Tsukihime, Naga, raven, hospital...

"Sasuke lives here now, kid," she said absently, "across the hall from your room. I have to go to the hospital -- don't kill each other while I'm gone. If you have to fight, take it outside. Be good and I'll take you out for ramen tonight."

She grabbed her chuunin vest from its hook on the wall, and ran.

\---------------

The first thing she thought when she woke was _bright_. The second was _pain_. The third was _Tsukihime_. Naga blinked, ran a quick visual check to make sure she was in the Konoha hospital and not in the hands of an unknown enemy, coughed, and tried to ask that one out loud.

"Your partner is being treated, Naga-san," a medic-nin said as he leaned over her and shone a blinding, senbon-thin beam of light into her eyes. "Your pupils contract normally. That's good; you don't have a concussion. We worried when you didn't wake up."

Naga latched onto the important part. "Tsukihime's alive?"

The medic-nin nodded. "For the moment. It's a miracle she didn't die of shock or blood-loss before you arrived here, and there are complications from the burn, but you chose right when you cauterized her leg."

"Thank fuck." Naga twisted so she was lying on her side, and propped herself up with her elbow. She still felt wobbly and weak, but this time her body answered when she tried to move. "When can I see her?"

"Not for at least another day," the medic-nin said. "Now that you're awake, I'll fetch Heika-san from Intelligence so you can explain what happened to you and your partner." He slipped out of the small white room before Naga could protest.

Ten seconds later, the door opened just enough to let in a patch of air that shimmered like a heat mirage. Naga smiled. "Hey, Yukiko."

Yukiko dropped the genjutsu and leaned against the door. "Hey. It's about time you woke up -- I've been waiting for two hours. Hospital food is terrible and your parents were driving me crazy." She looked harried, Naga thought, and she'd put her chuunin vest on over her blue jacket, which she never did. Something else had to be wrong besides Naga's injury. Shinobi didn't get this upset over simple hospital visits.

"Should've thought ahead and brought a snack," Naga said. "Okay. You look like hell. Something's up, something big. What's going on?"

Yukiko sighed. "Huh. I should know better than to try slipping things past other ninja." She shook her head. "It's not for me to say, though. Wait until Heika-san gets here -- he'll explain everything."

"Right," Naga said skeptically, but she let Yukiko help her sit up and lean against the headboard of her bed. Yukiko sat on the examiner's stool, kicking her heels against the wall, and waited in silence.

After a minute, the door opened again and Kinomi Heika, the special jounin head of Intelligence, walked in with a handful of papers. He frowned slightly at Yukiko, but she stared back until he sighed and gestured as if tossing the argument aside. That was weird. Yukiko worked for Intelligence, sure, but not usually on anything big enough to pull her boss's personal attention or let her sit in on another ninja's report. But before Naga could chase the implications of that thought, Heika turned to Naga and pinned her in place under his hard, black gaze.

She did her best not to flinch. Heika wasn't quite as scary as Morino Ibiki, who ran Interrogations, but he was scary enough.

"Six days ago, Uchiha Itachi murdered all members of the Uchiha clan who were then in Konoha, with the exception of his younger brother, Sasuke," Heika said brusquely. "We've been unable to contact the Uchiha who were out on missions and we assumed he'd eliminated them as well. Your arrival with Uchiha Tsukihime throws that assumption into question. Report."

Naga stared blankly across the room. The whole Uchiha clan was gone? Big didn't begin to cover it. And what was going to happen to Tsukihime?

Heika tapped his sheaf of papers against his free hand with an impatient air.

Naga shoved her thoughts into some semblance of order. Right. Report first, freak out later. "Tsukihime got a private message seven days ago, in Hidden Grass. It said there was clan trouble in Konoha, told her to ditch her mission, hide, and wait for a clan member to come explain things. I read the message and followed her. We waited on the border between Grass and Fire. Itachi found us late afternoon yesterday.

"There's something wrong with his eyes -- Sharingan's shaped wrong, like blades instead of commas. He asked why I was with Tsukihime, said I was interfering, and put me under genjutsu." Naga frowned. "It wasn't normal genjutsu, not even normal Uchiha-style with the extra visual layers. I can break genjutsu -- Yukiko helps me practice -- but I couldn't break this. Three days, subjective time, getting dismembered by swords." She shivered at the memory, and continued. "It has psychosomatic effects, too. I could barely move when it let up.

"Didn't touch my bloodline limit, though, and I grabbed my summoning scroll and called Kuroba-sama. He snatched me and Tsukihime and came here. She'd been playing for time, but Itachi was going easy on her. He would've killed her in another minute or two. I cauterized her leg and passed out. That's all."

Now Yukiko and Heika were both frowning. "Uchiha Sasuke reported that his brother had activated an unknown fourth level of the Sharingan bloodline limit, but we weren't sure whether to believe that," Heika said thoughtfully, drumming his fingers against his papers. "Apparently he was telling the truth."

Yukiko raked a hand through her hair, touching her forehead protector in passing. "That's not the important thing, Heika-san," she said. "Itachi _hasn't_ killed all the Uchiha. He just sent the ones on missions into hiding. If we reach them first..."

"Yes," Heika said slowly, "yes, we'll do that. I'll have the mission records checked first thing. We'll send a team to your campsite, Naga, and track him from there." A chilly smile spread across his round face. "We had no idea which way Itachi went when he left the village, but now we know where he's been and we have some idea where he's going. Good job." He nodded crisply to Naga and left, shutting the door with a solid click.

Naga stared at the door for a moment. Then the nagging thought from before returned, and she turned to face Yukiko. "Hey. Why are you involved in this? You spy on civilians, not missing-nin, and assassination's not your thing."

Yukiko grinned wryly. "True, but apparently taking in troubled orphans _is_. Sarutobi Hokage-sama dumped Sasuke into my hands a couple days ago. I figure the more of his family we can find alive, the better for both him and me. Besides, I hate seeing friends in this place."

"Thanks," Naga said awkwardly. Then the first part hit her. "Wait, you're taking care of that bastard's little brother?"

"Yeah."

"Does he have that 'I'm ten times better than you' attitude?"

"Yeah, that too."

"And he's in the same building as you and that utter brat?" When Yukiko nodded, Naga tipped back her head and laughed.

"It's not that funny," Yukiko protested. Naga kept laughing. Yukiko stepped forward, but she stopped and lowered her hand before actually flicking Naga's shoulder. "Oh, fine. I'm going to get your mother and then we'll see who laughs."

Naga ignored her. Tsukihime was alive, she was home, and they had a plan to get the bastard who'd nearly killed her partner. Under the circumstances, that was as close to victory as she was going to get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over on Livejournal, some people questioned my interpretation of Mangekyou Sharingan and Itachi's Tsukuyomi technique, since in canon Kakashi had a much harder time waking up from the resulting coma than Naga does here. My answer has three parts:
> 
> 1) Itachi has less experience and skill with the technique than he's acquired by the canon time period; the psychological trauma is therefore not as encompassing.
> 
> 2) Kakashi doesn't usually need to fight genjutsu since he has a Sharingan of his own and can just see through them. Naga has no such advantage and also spends time training with Yukiko. She may not be able to break Tsukuyomi, but she has a LOT more practice shaking off genjutsu aftereffects.
> 
> 3) It's my story and I say so. *grin*


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Third, in which Naruto disapproves of his new neighbor, Yukiko receives a mission, Naga and Kakashi have a little heart-to-heart, Yukiko deals with her family, and the plot kicks into gear at last.

Sasuke looked warily at the half-familiar boy in the orange pants and jacket, but the boy ignored him. Instead, he was watching the doorway the woman had run through, and his face was crinkled with worry. "I guess it _was_ Naga," he mumbled. Then he shrugged and turned back to Sasuke. He grinned -- a stupid smile, big enough that anyone could see it from a hundred yards away. It went with his clothes and his spiky, yellow hair.

"Hey, hey, I'm Uzumaki Naruto. Yukiko-neechan's my big sister and this is her building, so it's sort of my building too. So I'm gonna tell you the rules." He held up his hand and started ticking off fingers. "You're not allowed to bug the tenants or mess up the public areas, but you can do what you want in your room as long as you fix it before you stop renting the apartment. You can bug Yukiko-neechan, 'cause she's a ninja and it's like practice, but you can't mess up anything really important, like contracts and taxes, 'cause then she'll be _really_ mad. And," he added with a scowl that stretched the three whisker marks on each of his cheeks, "you can't bug her when I'm already with her, 'cause she's _my_ sister.

"The yard out back is for ninja practice and stuff, but you have to be careful if civilians are out there with pets 'cause killing dogs by accident is stupid and irrespons'ble, and Yukiko-neechan has to pay _huge_ fines," -- he waved his arms expressively -- "and then she yells a lot and that's no fun." He paused and scratched his head. "I think that's it. Oh! And when Yukiko-neechan's out on missions, her cousin Yusuke runs the place. He stinks. He's not even a ninja, and he'll report you to the police if you break the rules."

Naruto grinned again. "There! Hey, hey, why are you living here anyway? Don't you have a house or something?"

Sasuke, still overwhelmed by the flood of words and the boy's sheer presence, didn't catch his flinch in time.

Naruto's blue eyes narrowed. "Hey, if you're in the room across from mine, that's a really small apartment. You couldn't fit a whole family in there, not unless you squeezed _really_ tight, and I heard a lot of people got killed a few days ago, and... hey, was that your family?"

Sasuke glared, but Naruto ran right over him without noticing. "That really stinks, if it was your family, but I didn't have any family either and now Yukiko-neechan's my family, so maybe we can be your family too! Even if you are a stuck-up bastard and you don't talk." He held out his hand toward Sasuke. "I'll take one of your bags upstairs. Okay?"

Finally, an opening. "No," Sasuke said, as flatly as he could.

Hurt flashed across Naruto's face, but the orange boy quickly buried it under cheerful confusion. "No, don't take your bag, or no, don't be friends?"

"Both," Sasuke said, and then added, almost in spite of himself, "Moron."

Naruto nodded absently. "Yeah, I thought that's what you meant. I'm not gonna do anything now 'cause Yukiko-neechan's worried about Naga, but tomorrow I'm gonna kick your ass, bastard. And you can carry your bags yourself." He stuck his tongue out at Sasuke and dashed out of the office as fast as he'd slammed into it not five minutes before.

Sasuke peered around the doorframe to see which way Naruto went, and relaxed when the orange boy ran outside instead of heading for the stairs. He waited a long minute, counting his breaths, until he was certain Naruto wasn't coming back and wouldn't see him struggling with his packs. Then he grabbed the heavier one, the one the woman had carried on the way from home, and started dragging it toward the rear stairwell.

He didn't need anybody's pity or any more fake families. Especially not one that had people like Naruto in it.

\---------------

Yukiko held up a section of wall for several minutes while Tonoike Taizen and Bashoto fussed over their daughter, then made her apologies and slipped out. She needed to talk to Heika-san.

Apparently he shared that thought, since a nurse flagged her down as she walked toward the main door of the hospital, and told her that Heika-san wanted to see her at headquarters ASAP. Yukiko nodded and took to the roofs, squinting against the late afternoon sun. It was the fastest way around Konoha and she needed to do something physical anyway.

Intelligence and Interrogations had their headquarters in a nondescript complex of low buildings near the edge of town, well away from the Hokage monument and the Hokage's tower and administration complex on top of the cliff. It was best not to keep prisoners too close to the important things, and the small gap in communications was wonderful for plausible deniability, should the need arise. Yukiko landed on the ground near the complex wall -- you simply didn't roof-hop over headquarters, the same way you didn't roof-hop over Anbu central -- and walked through the open gate.

Heika-san had a small office on the first basement level. Three walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, and the fourth was covered in maps, string, and a collection of thumbtacked notes written in a dozen different codes. A well-concealed ventilation tunnel brought in fresh air and offered insurance against poison gas attacks; courtesy of some carefully arranged (and technically against regulation) mirrors, it also let in a bit of natural sunlight. Beyond that one indulgence, there was no visible sign that this office was one of the two nerve centers of headquarters. Heika-san liked it that way.

He looked up from his desk as Yukiko knocked on his open door.

"We're doubly disrupted now," he began abruptly. "Everyone's on short staff since the Uchiha died, and with the new revelations, we have to mobilize teams to find potential survivors. Everything else is a mess and we're upping priority on some missions. You were assigned to investigate a shipping magnate up in Sky Country, to see if we strictly need to kill him or if we can leave that to Hidden Cloud when they finally see what's under their noses."

Yukiko nodded. "I wasn't scheduled to leave for another two weeks," she said neutrally.

Heika-san frowned. "True, but we can't afford any potential instability now, with our numbers down and our people scattered. It's been upgraded to immediate assassination. You get one week to find his connections; then your partner takes him out. You're working with Anbu on this mission -- Fuuma Seichi, one of their assassination specialists.

"Your cover is the same as usual. We'll add you to a trade caravan that leaves for Sky Country the day after tomorrow, under escort by Yuuhi Kurenai. Meet Seichi and Kurenai here, ten in the morning tomorrow, and make plans." Heika-san pinned Yukiko with his hard, black stare. "Don't screw up. We need that man gone. We need his connections and his plans. And don't bring Cloud-nin down on your back."

He returned to his papers, clearing dismissing Yukiko. She bowed and walked silently down the corridor toward the stairs. She didn't answer any of the other Intelligence ops who greeted her, just waved absently and continued on her way out of the complex. She didn't feel settled enough to carry on a conversation.

Assassination. She'd never run an assassination before. Oh, she'd killed a few people -- she was a ninja; death was impossible to avoid entirely -- but they had all been actively trying to kill her or someone her team was guarding. Selecting a person who hadn't attacked her and calmly deciding that he or she would die... no, that she hadn't done. There was a reason she'd never wanted to join Anbu. There was also a reason people said Anbu was a head-trip and nobody should stay there longer than five years at a stretch.

Now she'd have to work hand-in-glove with an Anbu, an assassination specialist. Yukiko touched her forehead-protector for reassurance. She could do this.

Fuuma Seichi. She thought she recognized the name, actually; he was some relation of Ame, her old genin teammate. A second cousin, perhaps, and a few years older. The Fuuma were known for having their heads on reasonably straight, unlike, say, the Hyuuga or the Uchiha. With any luck, that would mitigate the instability Anbu operatives tended to develop.

Yukiko paused. Wait. Uchiha. Sasuke. What on earth was she going to do with the boy while she was off in Sky Country? Then an even more unpleasant thought hit her: she'd left Sasuke alone with Naruto three hours ago. _Shit_. Was her building still standing?

Yukiko abandoned her mission worries and ran flat-out towards her home. Fortunately, it was still intact when she got there, though Tsubume Emi from 3-F had left a note in her box complaining about loud thumping noises in the rear stairwell.

Apparently Sasuke had managed to get both his bags up to the seventh floor and into his room, since neither he nor his luggage were in her office or the stairwell when Yukiko checked. Her office looked untouched, so either he and Naruto had become instant friends -- she snorted at the thought -- or they'd drawn a truce of some sort. She hoped it was permanent enough that they wouldn't start an all-out war when she left in two days. That would not be good for her property values.

Yukiko sat behind her desk and cradled her head in her hands. Shit. She had tonight, part of tomorrow, and maybe an hour or two the next morning to arrange all her affairs for the next two to three weeks. This was not a good time for surprise missions. She'd just bought the building next door last month, and she was in the middle of negotiating blueprints and prices with the construction company she'd hired to renovate it. She could leave her cousin Yusuke in charge of this building -- that was no problem -- but she didn't quite trust him to close the contract with Soujiro-san or to oversee the construction project. Furthermore, Yura had agreed to open a restaurant on the ground floor of the new building, and Yukiko _really_ didn't trust Yusuke to keep his big sister's design whims under control.

On top of all that, what was she supposed to do about Sasuke? Sarutobi Hokage-sama had entrusted the boy into her care, and now she was going to hare off and leave him alone less than a week after Sarutobi-sama had told her that he shouldn't be left alone! This was a nightmare.

"Hey, hey, Yukiko-neechan?"

Yukiko looked up at Naruto's voice.

The kid was hanging onto the doorframe and swinging in and out of her office. He grinned hopefully and said, "I was good! I didn't even yell at the bastard, even though he called me a moron and looked at me all nasty like people do when they want to hit you. I get ramen now, right?"

"Yeah, you get ramen," Yukiko said, pushing back from her desk. "Let me take off my vest and grab my wallet, and we'll head to Ichiraku."

Naruto bounced with anticipation. Yukiko grinned at him; he could be an incredibly annoying brat, but he was _her_ incredibly annoying brat. And whatever shit he'd lived through before he came here, at least he didn't clam up and close off like Sasuke did. She was beginning to wonder if anything could get through that boy's shell at this point, or if he'd stay solid ice until he exploded some day. If even Naruto couldn't get more than Sasuke's standard glare, there was probably no hope for him.

Well, if Sasuke was frozen inside, at least he'd be stable while she was away. He wouldn't get any better, but as long as he didn't get worse, she'd call that good enough. Dealing with mental trauma wasn't her problem anyway. Yeah, she played around with people's heads, but she wasn't a medic or a Yamanaka. Her skills were geared toward breaking people, not putting them back together.

"Hurry up, Yukiko-neechan!" Naruto shouted. "Come on! I want my ramen now!"

"You need to work on your patience if you want to be a great shinobi, kid," Yukiko said, but she let Naruto grab her hand and pull her into the mellow evening light.

\---------------

The sun teetered on the rim of the hills, casting giant shadows and blinding horizontal rays of light over Konoha and onto the western face of the hospital. It was impossible for Naga to watch her window directly, but she heard the slight rustle as somebody slid down the outer wall and swung in.

She hurled a kunai in the intruder's general direction and another at the cord holding up the blinds. They rattled down and she blinked furiously, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness. "Visiting hours aren't quite over," she said, drawing a third kunai, "but you're supposed to use the door."

"But where's the fun in that?" the intruder asked lightly.

Naga set down her kunai and groaned. "Go away, Kakashi."

The jounin, who was definitely in the running for Most Irritating Person on Earth, only smiled -- his visible eye crinkled into a happy crescent and his cloth facemask flexed slightly. "Yo. I would've come sooner, but I was delayed by a swarm of rabid bumblebees. Congratulations on pulling your teammate out of that mess."

What was she supposed to say to that? Yeah, she'd pulled Tsukihime out, but she'd been stupid enough to let Itachi catch her eyes in the first place and now there were 'complications' from her field cauterization. Tsukihime might never manage fieldwork again, and it was all Naga's fault. "Whatever," Naga said, twitching her shoulder. She looked down at her lap and fiddled with the kunai. "Thanks for teaching me that jutsu, last year."

Kakashi waved that off and slumped onto the stool, pulling out his latest porn book as he sat. Naga waited in silence as he flipped through several pages. Finally he settled on what seemed to be a satisfactory passage.

"They're sending me after Itachi," he said, sounding remarkably detached and pleasant.

Naga nodded. "Figures. You were Anbu. And you have the Sharingan."

"And nin-dogs. It's one of my lesser-known talents, but I'm a reasonably skilled summoner." He turned a page.

Naga nodded again, not bothering to say anything. Kakashi didn't look like he was watching, but he was a jounin. There was very little she wouldn't put past him.

"Can you walk?"

Naga twitched her shoulder irritably. "Beats me. I'm under orders to stay in bed and not try anything. Even made me use a bedpan."

Kakashi lowered his book and looked at her, straight on. "Try. I need a partner. You have a good tracking summons, you have firsthand experience of Itachi's new skill, you have a taijutsu style he can't copy, and you have the motivation to push yourself beyond your limits. It's not standard procedure to bring non-Anbu in on hunting missions, but if you're up to this, I want you."

For about three seconds, Naga's mind went blank. Then her mouth curled up into something that might pass as a smile if you didn't look too closely, but that felt more like baring her fangs at scurrying prey. "Even if I can't move right, get me soldier pills and I'll come. I don't care what I screw up. That bastard nearly killed Tsukihime. I want him _dead_."

Kakashi shook his head. "No. If you're not recovered, you're a liability."

"Fuck you."

Kakashi didn't bother to answer. He just waited, expressionless, his porn book held loosely in one hand as he watched her.

Slowly, painfully, Naga pushed the light blanket off her body and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her right calf was bandaged, and she could feel the itching, burning throb of a healing wound. Beyond that, her whole body ached, like she'd been running flat-out while wearing a weighted bodysuit, or like... well, like all her muscles and tendons had been sliced and stitched back together. It's psychosomatic, she told herself. Those days weren't real. But that was a lie. Itachi's crazy eyes made the pain real, even if the swords had been an illusion.

Whatever. She was shinobi, and she had a partner to avenge. She was going to put weight on her feet. Then she was going to stand up and walk across the room, one step at a time.

Kakashi's stare felt heavy on her side.

Naga stood, wavered, and took the first step.

\---------------

Yukiko slept badly and woke early, plagued by thoughts of everything that could go wrong with her construction project, with an assassination, and with Naruto and Sasuke. Sometimes they got muddled and she dreamed of assassins decimating the construction company, Naruto killing her target, or Sasuke masquerading as a code inspector and declaring her new building unsafe. She took a long shower to clear her mind, and went to visit her uncle.

Her cousin Yui smiled from behind the counter as Yukiko walked through Ayakawa Yutaro's grocery shop. Yukiko smiled back. She did some specialty shopping for her uncle as part of her cover on intelligence missions, but Yui was the one who usually received the cargo, which both Yukiko and Yutaro were just as happy about. Neither of them liked the other much.

Still, there was no denying that Yutaro had a shrewd mind and a keen eye for a deal, and while Yura might change her mind simply to spite him, Yukiko figured that her uncle could and would stop listening to any design changes past a certain point. If that left Yura with a restaurant she didn't like, that was her own problem. All Yukiko needed was to have the plans finalized by the middle of next week without being overcharged by the architect, the interior designer, or Soujiro-san's construction company. Yutaro could certainly manage that.

She walked up the stairs to his office, making certain not to silence her steps. The last thing she needed to do was startle her uncle and remind him, again, that she'd broken family tradition and become a ninja.

"Uncle Yutaro," she said, keeping her voice neutral.

"Yukiko," he responded, laying his pen down on his account book and turning his chair to face her. His deep-set eyes were quizzical and faintly disapproving. "I thought we'd already agreed that you should look into salted rainbow fish when you visit Sky Country. There simply aren't many other foods there worth transporting in small quantities."

Yukiko suppressed a grimace. By the next time she wound up in a situation like this, she was going to have Yusuke trained well enough that she wouldn't have to humiliate herself this way. "I know," she said. "Something's come up, though. You've heard what happened to the Uchiha clan?"

Yutaro nodded, and seemed set to begin a lecture on the natural and negative consequences of the shinobi lifestyle.

Yukiko forestalled him. "Because we're short-handed all of a sudden, a lot of missions are being rescheduled, including mine. I'm leaving tomorrow, not in two weeks, which means somebody else has to close the deal with Soujiro-san. Yusuke's not up to that yet and he can't keep Yura from switching her plans past the deadline."

Faced with a business problem, Yutaro let his habitual protests against Yukiko's chosen life slide for the moment. "I see. Will Soujiro-san be available today? I can free time this afternoon to discuss the necessary details."

Yukiko's shoulders loosened with relief. "Good. I had a meeting scheduled for three, so if you stop by my office then, we can get everything straightened out. I have the apartment plans mostly in order; Soujiro-san and the architect are just making sure everything is workable. Yura's restaurant is the only big issue left, and you can deal with her as well as I can."

"I should hope so," Yutaro said dryly, letting a rare glimpse of humor show through his serious façade. "I did raise her for sixteen years, after all." Yukiko smiled at her uncle.

"If your mission has been rescheduled, I'm sure you have other meetings to get to," Yutaro continued, turning back to his accounts. "I'll see you at three, Yukiko."

Yukiko's smile turned wry at her uncle's dismissal. She'd run her own business for eight years now, quite successfully, but he still treated her like a child sometimes. "Thanks, Uncle Yutaro," she said, and clattered down his stairs.

She walked home and killed an hour tweaking the boiler -- she'd have to break down and buy a new one sometime before winter, but for now she and Yusuke could baby it along week by week -- before changing her jacket for her chuunin vest and roof-hopping toward headquarters to meet Yuuhi Kurenai and Fuuma Seichi, to plan an assassination.

She'd met Kurenai perhaps a dozen times when they were younger and their respective jounin-sensei had arranged lessons with the same genjutsu instructors. Most non-Uchiha genjutsu specialists knew each other -- or at least knew _of_ each other -- through that loose network of mentors and students, since their field was somewhat esoteric and there were only so many people willing to teach genin how to reach beyond the basics. But a few shared lessons didn't translate to real familiarity. Beyond an impression of competence, all Yukiko could recall was that Kurenai had struck her as oddly shy for a shinobi.

As for Seichi, she had a vague memory of Ame pointing to an older boy with brown hair when she'd invited Yukiko and Kasumi to a Fuuma clan gathering one time, but that wasn't much to go on. Anyway, he'd become an assassin since then. Assassins were always a bit odd, at best, and downright unbalanced at worst. Hatake Kakashi was a former assassin, and look what Anbu had done to _him_.

Yukiko hoped this impromptu team wouldn't turn into a disaster.

The shinobi at the front desk directed her to a room on the second floor of headquarters, and Yukiko trudged off to meet her new partners. She was early by fifteen minutes, but when she reached the room, she could hear quiet voices discussing the most efficient route to Sky Country. Yukiko sighed. It was good that neither Kurenai nor Seichi had Kakashi's particular bad habits, but she'd hoped to be the first to arrive.

She kept her steps audible and knocked politely on the doorframe before entering the room. The two occupants looked up and studied her briefly; then Kurenai motioned her to close the door. Yukiko did, and moved to claim one of the two free chairs at the small table, making her own study as she went.

Yuuhi Kurenai was pale and slight, with wavy dark hair and the solid red eyes of the Yuuhi clan. She wore her chuunin vest over one of the strangest outfits Yukiko had ever seen: a dress that seemed to be made of wrapped bandages. It looked as though a sneeze would dislodge it, but Kurenai seemed perfectly comfortable, so Yukiko supposed it must be more stable than it appeared -- that, or she had no body-shyness and used it as a distraction technique.

Fuuma Seichi was much more nondescript, which suited a covert assassin. He wore black pants, an old white shirt, and a long gray duster over his vest. His hair was reddish-brown and needed a trim; it fell messily across his forehead and shaded his eyes, making his face hard to read. Unlike Kurenai, who was patiently still in the classic kunoichi tradition, he fiddled constantly with a deck of cards, shuffling, dealing arrays of numbers and faces, then gathering the cards to shuffle again. His fingers were covered in tiny, white scars. After a moment, Yukiko identified them as old paper cuts.

"We're all early," Seichi said without looking up at Yukiko or Kurenai. "That could be a problem, if we all push our schedules."

Yukiko shrugged. "It's best to get things done quickly, considering how little time we have to plan. I wasn't expecting to leave for another two weeks."

"Mmm," Kurenai said. "What precisely _is_ this mission? I'm supposed to follow you discreetly once you reach your destination, but I don't know why you need support."

Now Seichi looked up and shook his hair from his face. His eyes were pale blue, and cold, like ice. Assassin eyes, Yukiko thought; no wonder he hid them. "We're heading for Tengai, a port on the north bay in Sky Country. There's a merchant who's been gathering missing-nin; nobody knows why. The most recent caravan escort dug around a little and learned that his people have made contact with an organized group, which shoved him up the priority list. We have a week to track his connections. Then I kill him."

Kurenai seemed slightly taken aback by the disinterest in his voice. "Oh. So I'm backup in case the missing-nin spot you." Seichi nodded and returned to shuffling his cards, letting his hair fall back into his eyes.

"Seichi and I will be undercover," Yukiko said. "My usual pose is as a buyer for my uncle and cousin's stores, so I'll be looking for delicacies and fabrics to bring back. No matter how hard the target tries to keep his business secret, his competitors and trading partners will know some of his plans. If you can identify some of his missing-nin and tail them, that would also be helpful."

"I'll infiltrate his organization, probably as a clerk or a dock-worker," Seichi said, still sounding as if this mission meant less to him than his next meal. "While we're traveling, I'll share caravan space with Yukiko. Do you object if we spin a family cover or act as lovers?" He dealt a game of solitaire and began playing, flipping over cards and ordering them in chains of alternating red and black.

Yukiko shook her head. "That's fine, although family friends or employer and employee would be easier. Love doesn't get much respect in business, but obligations are sacred."

"Whatever works." Seichi lost his game, swept up his cards, and shuffled them again. He cut them into three stacks, rejoined them, and dealt a swift cross-shaped pattern. "Aha. Good omens. We should work well together."

Huh. Fortune-telling? Yukiko exchanged a skeptical glance with Kurenai. Well, Assassins always got peculiar. If this was the extent of Seichi's quirks, Yukiko thought she could live with them.

"So we're settled," Kurenai said. "The caravan leaves at an hour past dawn tomorrow, starting from the east gate. I'll arrange an extra mule for your bags." Yukiko nodded and pushed back her chair, ready to conclude the meeting.

Kurenai brushed her hair behind her shoulders as she stood. "I want to review the files on Tengai and this mission before we leave," she said. "What's the target's name?"

Seichi's cards rattled against the table as he answered: "Amane Eiji. And the group he's made contact with goes by the name Akatsuki."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I began writing "The Guardian in Spite of Herself" in 2005! Some details are therefore out of sync with later canon, and I have decided not to drive myself crazy trying to reconcile all of the differences.
> 
> The main discrepancy featured in this chapter is the name of the small country that sits to the southwest of Lightning Country and forms its only known land border. In the manga, this is Frost Country. In the Apartment Manager AU, that land is Sky Country. It has no ninja village, and the port town of Tengai is its largest urban center (though not its capital).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Fourth, in which we meet Amane Eiji, Naga argues with her mother, Yukiko has a frustrating conversation with Kakashi, Sasuke overhears precisely the wrong section of that conversation, and Naruto makes a Cunning Plan.

"Rika called me down to break up another fight on the docks this morning and I came damn close to killing someone before the new guards backed down and apologized to Takeshi's crew. Are you certain we can make this work, Eiji?"

Amane Eiji looked up from a cargo manifest as his brother-in-law climbed through his office window. "It's a bit late for that question," he said, restraining his irritation. "We've moved far enough that if we can't pull it off, we're both dead men walking."

Ginji closed the window, cutting off the pleasant breeze Eiji had been enjoying, and raked a hand through his dark hair so it stood up even more wildly than usual. "I don't like it. Hiring a few missing-nin is one thing. Everyone understands economics, and I can look the other way, especially if they're from Sand or Leaf, but this... this is a problem. They're not skilled and only a handful have any self-control. They draw too much attention."

Ginji drew a kunai and began flipping it from hand to hand. Tiny sparks leapt from his fingers to bare steel and back again, a sure sign of tension. "You made a convincing argument for picking up speed, but there's only so much I can cover before I get recalled to Kumo or a team passes through and notices something out of place. Everyone in town supports you, but they're only civilians. They're useless against shinobi. We need allies. And we need them soon."

Civilians were far from useless, by any definition of the word, but Eiji understood Ginji's worry. He set aside his papers and steepled his fingers, watching Ginji steadily. "I have good news on that front. Takeshi brought a message from a group of missing-nin based in River Country. They helped him out of a tight spot in Water Country, he paid them standard rates and gave them the pitch, and they're sending representatives to meet us in person. Takeshi says they have ten members, all jounin-level."

Ginji's blue eyes narrowed. "Ten jounin? That stinks like rotting fish guts. Missing-nin that strong don't work together, not in more than pairs. Trust me. I don't tell you how to load the ships. You need to stop cutting deals with shinobi before I can look them over. You don't understand us."

"I'm perfectly happy not understanding," Eiji countered. "Why should I want to understand how people can willingly train children to be killers, or how they can deliberately keep our countries weak, disorganized, and in constant chaos just so they can kill more people and claim to be necessary? Why should I want to understand the people who taught you never to laugh? You're still inside the system, no matter how much Tetsuko and I try to pull you back."

He held Ginji's eyes for a long moment, willing his oldest friend to understand, to break free from the training that chained his emotions even after he'd consciously repudiated it.

Ginji sighed. Then the corners of his mouth quirked upward the faintest amount, more like the ghost of an expression than a true smile.

"One of us needs to understand or we'll all be dead before anything changes," Ginji said dryly. "No matter how many people you convince to hate the hidden villages, civilians can't stand up to shinobi in a fight. And no matter how much you talk about indoctrination and suppression of personalities, the system _works_. The higher you go, the more it hooks into your brain and the less you care about people in general. Jounin care about their villages and a few particular people. Missing-nin don't even care about their former villages. Ten jounin-level missing-nin working together..." He shook his head. "I don't know what could keep them from turning on each other, but whatever it is, it's bound to be dangerous."

Ginji stuffed the kunai back into his holster and walked to the window. "Let one representative come -- just one, no partners -- and don't meet him without me. You can't be reckless anymore, Eiji. Tetsuko will kill me if you make her a widow, and I don't know anything about raising children... unless you want Mitsuko to end up as a kunoichi."

Another ghost-smile flickered across his lips. Then he was gone.

Eiji cracked his fingers, leaned back in his chair, and wished, for the ten thousandth time, that Ginji had never been sponsored into the ninja academy in Hidden Cloud, or that he and Tetsuko had talked him out of the training instead of cheering him on.

Nevertheless, it was true that Ginji was an invaluable resource on any number of levels: spy, window into the ninja mindset, bodyguard, master of the security department, tacit threat to their growing cadre of missing-nin. And he was getting better. He could make jokes again. He could let Tetsuko hug him and ruffle his hair without tensing or displacing himself across the room. He could even let Mitsuko climb on his shoulders without going stiff and silent to hide flashbacks to children he'd killed.

Eiji looked at Takeshi's report again. Ten jounin-level missing-nin. He couldn't afford to pass up the opportunity. Whatever Akatsuki's ultimate goal was -- and if Ginji said they had one, Eiji believed him -- they undoubtedly had no love for their former villages, or for the international system those villages supported.

Eiji could work with that.

\---------------

"Are you certain this is wise, Naga-chan?" Tonoike Taizen asked.

"Yes," Naga said, and went back to scribbling her name on the discharge papers and the bill for her hospital stay. She leaned on the main desk, giving her slashed leg a bit of respite, and refused to show how much she ached.

"You should stay at least one more night in case there are unforeseen side-effects of that genjutsu, or an infection in your leg wound," her mother continued, as if Naga hadn't said anything. "I understand the appeal of resting in your own bed at home, but I'll be busy and your father is leaving on a mission in two hours, so we won't be within earshot if you need unexpected help."

Naga looked up. "Dad has a mission? Since when?"

"It is extremely short notice," her mother agreed, adjusting her mountain-patterned kimono with a sharp gesture, "but all available personnel are required to search for potential surviving Uchiha, to fill in for the military police, or to adopt the missions of any Uchiha who are confirmed dead. Bashoto is going south to the islands. He may not return for months." Her hands fiddled with her obi, a sure sign of irritation. Normally Taizen wouldn't dream of showing any uncontrolled emotion.

Naga shoved the discharge papers and bill over the desk to the hospital secretaries and limped across the lobby to the main doors. Her mother reached them first and held them open for her. Naga let her breath out in an irritated hiss -- she _hated_ being patronized -- but she had to admit it was nice not to strain herself pulling on things. Taizen fell in beside her and filled the silence with a mild discourse on the past week's weather, which Naga heard without really paying attention. She was trying to figure out how to break the news of her own mission to her mother without starting an argument.

She still hadn't thought of one by the time they turned down the alley behind the teahouse, so she decided to just say it. "It's all right if Dad's gone. I have a mission too. I leave tomorrow."

Her mother went still, like a snake waiting to strike. Naga fought the urge to hunch her shoulders.

"Who assigned this?" Taizen asked, too softly.

"I volunteered," Naga mumbled. "Can we go inside?"

"In a minute. You _volunteered?_ In your state of health? Who accepted this?"

Naga whirled, catching her balance with a hand on their neighbor's back wall. "Mother. I'm shinobi. I'm a chuunin. It's my choice if I go on missions, not yours, so stop acting like I'm a baby!" She drew a deep breath. "I'm tracking Uchiha Itachi. It makes sense, since he can't copy my taijutsu and I've seen what he can do."

Taizen was ominously still.

"Kakashi's leading the mission."

Taizen let her shoulders slump a fraction. "Hatake Kakashi. I should have known." She sighed and reached to unlock their apartment door. "It does make sense, and I trust you to know whether or not you're capable of mission-level performance, but Uchiha Itachi most likely could have passed the jounin exam if he'd wanted. With unknown new techniques in his possession..."

Naga adjusted the hang of her vest and avoided her mother's eyes. "Fine. I won't tell you not to worry, if you won't tell me not to go."

Everything went still again for an endless second -- Naga wished, yet again, that her mother would teach her how to project _threat_ so effectively -- until the opening door knocked, gently, against the inner wall. "Go inside and lie down," Taizen said. "If you have a mission tomorrow, you need all the rest you can get. And please remember that I am shinobi as well, retired or not. Concern for my daughter is not the same as advising you to betray your duty."

Face burning, Naga slunk through the door.

\---------------

The meeting with Soujiro-san, the architect, Yura, and Uncle Yutaro left Yukiko wondering if she'd fallen asleep or had been trapped in a peculiarly convincing genjutsu that stretched and bent time like saltwater taffy. Explaining things to Yutaro only took twenty minutes; he had a firm grasp of business rates and already knew Soujiro-san through the local association of small business owners. Pinning Yura down on the details of her restaurant was a different story altogether. After the first half hour Yukiko began having headache-inducing flashbacks to the times she and Yuichiro had been forced to baby-sit Yura and the younger cousins. Yura loathed being under someone else's authority, and she practically drew blood for every firm decision her father squeezed from her.

By five o'clock, Yukiko had lost all patience and essentially shoved her relatives out the door. "Work out the rest of the details on your own time, when you're not costing me money," she said. "Just don't forget to run them by the interior designer and Soujiro-san. Good-bye." She shut the lobby door and hurried back to her office.

Soujiro-san favored her with a wry smile as he gathered his papers and helped the dazed architect stand up from his chair. "Family and business can be a tricky combination," he said.

"Yeah. I think I'm actually grateful my mission got rescheduled," Yukiko said, leaning against the wall. "If Yura wants to fight someone, better Uncle Yutaro than me."

"I'm impressed that she has the nerve to fight your uncle," the architect said. "She has spirit. And she's awfully pretty."

"She also has a high-strung ninja fiancé and a terrible sense of humor," Yukiko said dryly. "Back off, unless you like getting mauled by dogs."

The architect sighed and slid his diagrams into his satchel. "The good ones are always taken. Oh well, it's a big town and the girls can't _all_ go for shinobi. Don't worry, Yukiko-san! We'll have everything on schedule when you get back." He followed Soujiro-san out of her office and waved cheerfully as Yukiko showed them out the front door.

She shuffled back to her office, planning to put away her paperwork and collapse before Naruto came looking for dinner. That plan shattered the moment she opened the door. The shadows on her desk were wrong.

"It's only me," Kakashi said, as Yukiko's hands slammed together in a tiger seal. "And while it might be useful to practice getting swamped by extremely painful genjutsu, I'd prefer to avoid that for the moment."

Yukiko let her hands fall to her sides and frowned at the jounin who had unofficially adopted her team during her last chuunin exam, and who had, for reasons she'd never been able to pry out of him, continued insinuating himself into their lives. He was slouched in the corner, putting on a skilled imitation of a lazy good-for-nothing, if you didn't see the balanced set of his feet or the chill behind his one visible eye. Kakashi was a dangerous man, and Yukiko hated the way he could slip past all the traps she set around her private spaces. She might be ninety-eight percent sure he wouldn't hurt her, the kid, or any of the tenants, but you never _really_ knew with assassins. Besides, he was incredibly annoying when he felt like it, and he insisted on reading pornography in front of Naruto.

"You have the Sharingan," she said, unable to keep a slight accusing tone from her voice. "You shouldn't need experience dealing with genjutsu aftereffects."

"Ah, but if I don't uncover the eye, it doesn't do me any good! And Naga said that Itachi's new technique is resistant to the usual genjutsu counters. I'd rather not gamble on whether that includes a borrowed Sharingan." Kakashi shrugged, and ambled over to sit on Yukiko's desk.

Yukiko sighed and went to rescue her papers. "Watch where you put your ass," she said, tapping him on the hip; he shifted his weight and she pulled her blueprints into the open.

"I'd much rather watch _your_ ass," Kakashi said, and Yukiko could feel his cheerful leer as she turned away and opened a file cabinet drawer.

"Go ahead. My price is a free ramen dinner for me and the kid-- well, kids, now. Which reminds me." She shut the drawer and met Kakashi's eye, staring past the affable overlay to the darkness underneath. "If, by some horrible chance, all the rescue missions fail and Uchiha Tsukihime never wakes up, will you promise to help Sasuke wake his Sharingan and learn to use it? I can teach him genjutsu basics, but I don't have a clue how to focus illusions through the eyes and the ninjutsu and taijutsu aspects are completely not my field."

Kakashi was utterly still for half a breath. Then he shrugged fluidly. "Of course; debts must be paid. I'm leaving on a mission tomorrow, though, so I'll need a rain check on dinner."

"Fine. My mission got rescheduled for tomorrow as well. Is yours classified, or can I ask?"

"You can ask."

Yukiko waited, and then mentally smacked herself. She should know better than to feed Kakashi straight lines. "What's your mission?"

"Straightforward, though it may take quite a while. Uchiha Itachi is the most immediately dangerous missing-nin on our books. Somebody has to hunt him." Kakashi let Yukiko absorb the implications, then added, "I asked Naga to be my partner."

Yukiko scowled. An injured teammate could eat at your gut like acid, and she wouldn't begrudge anyone the right to sanctioned revenge, but even so. "She's recovered enough for that? You didn't see her before she woke up yesterday. She was barely breathing and the medics were talking about brain-death."

"Brain-death?" Kakashi's eye narrowed slightly. "She seemed quite lively when I stopped by the hospital yesterday evening, and I saw her running through kata an hour ago."

"Itachi did a serious number on her. Genjutsu can't kill directly -- push too hard and the body just goes unconscious -- but Itachi's technique might not have the same restrictions." Yukiko touched her forehead protector and ran her hand through her hair, tugging on the ends. "Look, just-- be careful. Both of you."

"I promised to teach Sasuke. I can't do that if I'm dead." Kakashi waved off the topic as if brushing away a falling leaf. "What's your assignment?"

"Investigating a shipping magnate and then running interference while he gets killed." Yukiko frowned. "I've never done assassination before."

"You get used to it," Kakashi said. "Location?"

"Sky Country." Yukiko sighed. "Itachi's throwing everything off schedule. I was supposed to have two more weeks off but here I am, running off in the middle of a business deal and leaving Sasuke alone when Sarutobi-sama specifically told me he _shouldn't_ be alone right now. I will be so happy when that weasel dies."

"Well, that's what we're here for."

"That and distracting me from my job. Okay, you've notified me -- now shoo. I want to get some work done before I have to leave Yusuke in charge again."

"He won't learn if you do everything for him," Kakashi said. "Sometimes students need room to fail. But maybe business is different from being shinobi."

He slipped out her window before Yukiko could answer.

\---------------

Sasuke woke at sunrise. The room felt wrong, so he didn't move; instead, he peered out through slivered eyes and clenched his fingers on the kunai under his pillow. When he recognized his new apartment, he rolled over and set the knife on his nightstand. That was one good thing about living on his own: nobody could tell him not to sleep with weapons in his hands. The blue-haired woman hadn't said anything when he packed his practice kunai, and she'd only nodded when he took his father's knives and shuriken as well.

He supposed she _was_ a ninja, even if she probably wasn't a good one.

His alarm clock was set for nine; he shouldn't have woken up so early. He didn't need to get up early to catch Itachi at breakfast any--

Sasuke clenched his hands. His nails dug into soft cotton instead of skin; he'd forgotten to take off the woman's bandages yesterday. He opened his hands and started to unwrap the left one... and then decided not to. He needed his hands to be a ninja.

He also needed to eat, and breakfast wouldn't cook itself. Sasuke trudged over to the corner that was his kitchen, trying not to trip over the cuffs of his too-long pajamas.

He burned the miso -- the smoke alarm's shrill beeping startled him so badly he almost scalded himself with the soup, and he had to spend a minute flapping a towel at the device to make it turn off -- but Sasuke made himself eat anyway. He had to be strong, and anyway, burnt soup was nothing compared to--

He poured the half-finished bowl down the sink and pushed himself through exercises until his shirt was damp with sweat, his legs and arms burned, and air seemed to scrape his throat raw as he breathed.

Then he showered, dressed, and dragged his new chair over to the open window. He rested his arms on the windowsill and stared out at Konoha. The apartment was high enough that he could see over most of the houses and watch ninja trace crooked paths through the architecture while civilians walked along beneath them. The air smelled like summer, warm and dry, and bird calls drifted on the gentle breeze. Finally, Sasuke decided it was late enough that the orange boy -- Naruto -- was definitely at the academy.

Naruto bothered Sasuke. He was loud and stupid and wore bright colors, which was all wrong for a ninja. He was one of the idiots who always interrupted Iruka-sensei and asked pointless questions -- Sasuke recognized him now that he'd had time to think, even though he'd never bothered to remember Naruto's name before. There hadn't been any reason to remember him.

Sasuke didn't want to know Naruto, and he didn't want to live next to him. He didn't want to see the idiot outside of the academy. Naruto bounced, he played jokes, and he was cheerful _all the time_. Nobody could really be that happy, especially not when people insulted him and treated him like the idiot he was. He had to be hiding something, and Sasuke didn't like secrets.

Secrets hurt.

He wrapped bandages around his thigh and tucked his father's shuriken between the layers of cloth. He only cut himself twice, which was good. He'd learn to do it better. Then he locked his door, just in case, and went to look at the back yard. His knees wobbled on the long flights of stairs, but he didn't let himself hold the railing for support. Ninja couldn't afford support.

The back yard was more like a small park than a yard. A large patch of grass spread out from the apartment building, surrounded by trees on three sides, and stretched nearly sixty meters until it reached the base of the village wall. To the left, a low fence marked the property line. There had clearly been a matching fence on the right, but somebody had pulled it out recently and filled in the post-holes with loose dirt, which meant that the yard now extended another thirty meters or so, all the way past the neighboring building. Bright orange cloth tags on short sticks marched across the ground; either they marked something underground, or they outlined the stupidest obstacle course Sasuke had ever seen.

Maybe Naruto had put them there. The moron liked orange.

The park in the center of the Uchiha district was nicer -- Sasuke missed the shush and slap of tiny waves along the shore of the pond -- but this would do. There were even two target boards set up near the soaring bulk of the town wall, and smaller paint splashes at various tricky spots on several trees. Sasuke had missed target practice yesterday, if Naruto had been telling the truth. He couldn't afford to fall behind the rest of the class.

His shoulders ached when he drew back his arms to throw the shuriken, and his knees wouldn't always hold firm. That was all right, Sasuke told himself when he missed the target for the twentieth time. Ita-- _that man_ was a lot stronger than he was, so he'd probably have a hard time when he fought him. He had to learn to fight even when he was tired or hurt.

After a while, though, he pulled a shuriken from the tree where his latest wild throw had sent it, and lay down on the grass. It was a warm day. The afternoon sun felt soft and heavy on his back, and it wouldn't hurt to rest for just a minute. Sasuke stuck the shuriken into the ground where he could grab it in half a second, and closed his eyes.

If he didn't look at the blue-haired woman's yard, he could pretend he was behind his own house. On a day like this, his mother would open the window and offer him something to drink, or his father might suddenly appear and lecture him for stealing his shuriken. Maybe Itachi would come out and sit beside him, would pick up the shuriken and show Sasuke how to hold his wrist to make sure the weapon stayed level as it flew...

His legs were chilly. Sasuke blinked and realized that the sun had moved and the tree's shadow had slid over half his body. He'd fallen asleep.

He was also incredibly hungry. He probably wouldn't be able to keep training until he ate something. Sasuke pushed himself upright, frowning as his sore body argued for more rest, and walked around the building to the front door. As he headed down the hallway toward the rear staircase, he heard voices behind the woman's office door. He slowed to listen.

"--done assassination before," the woman said.

"You get used to it," a strange man answered. "Location?"

"Sky Country." The woman sighed. "Itachi's throwing everything off schedule. I was supposed to have two more weeks off but here I am, running off in the middle of a business deal and leaving Sasuke alone when Sarutobi-sama specifically told me he _shouldn't_ be alone right now. I will be so happy when that weasel dies."

"Well, that's what we're here for."

"That and distracting me from my job. Okay, you've notified me -- now shoo. I want to get some work done before I have to leave Yusuke in charge again."

There was a tiny pause. Then the man said, "He won't learn if you do everything for him. Sometimes students need room to fail. But maybe business is different from being shinobi."

Something rustled, followed by footsteps and the sound of a window slamming shut. Sasuke hurried toward the stairs before the woman opened her door and realized that he'd been listening. He didn't want to look at her right now.

That woman was an assassin, and she was going to kill his broth-- kill _that man_.

Itachi needed to die! But Sasuke needed to kill him. If he didn't kill Itachi, then why was he still alive? If he didn't kill Itachi, then he might as well be dead like everyone else. Besides, Itachi wanted Sasuke to kill him. He _said_ so. He told Sasuke to hate him, and get strong.

Sasuke was so distracted that he didn't notice the stairwell door was open, which it shouldn't have been. He didn't hear the door close behind him with a muffled click. He didn't see the flash of orange in the muted electric light.

He did notice when Naruto punched his gut and tried to put him in a headlock.

Thirty rather confused seconds later, Sasuke had Naruto pinned facedown on the floor with a shuriken against his throat. Naruto thrashed once, testing, then went limp. "Bastard," he muttered.

"Moron," Sasuke said, pressing his knee into Naruto's back. "I'm not the one who attacked a better ninja for no reason."

"Hey! You're not better than me, and I did too have a reason. I told you yesterday I was gonna kick your ass! And you were spying on Yukiko-neechan, so you totally deserved it." Naruto pinched Sasuke's ankle, distracting him just long enough to jerk his head away from the shuriken and shove upwards with his other hand, toppling Sasuke off his back. He scrambled to his feet; and Sasuke followed, cursing his still-weak knees. "So, so, what did you hear?"

Sasuke blinked. "What?"

Naruto sniffed disdainfully and folded his arms, which was utterly stupid in the middle of a fight. "Hey, hey, and you say _I'm_ a moron? You were listening to Yukiko-neechan, you went all pale like rotten milk, and you didn't even notice me waiting, so she had to be talking about something important, yeah? What was it?"

"None of your business."

"Tell me, or I'll tell her you were spying. I'll say you tried to kill me -- my neck's bleeding, see, so she'll believe me! And what kind of bastard uses shuriken in a fight? That's cheating!"

Sasuke tried to fit everything he couldn't figure out how to say -- that they were ninja, that there was no such thing as a fair fight or cheating, that nobody in his right mind would ever believe an idiot like Naruto -- into his glare. Naruto didn't even notice.

"She's going to kill my brother," Sasuke said, after a minute.

Naruto's blue eyes stretched wide in horror. "No way! Yukiko-neechan's too nice to do anything like that! Unless... hey, hey, is your brother evil? Is he the one who killed your family? It was your family that all got killed last week, right? If your brother did that, he's really evil. You don't kill family!"

"He killed them," Sasuke said, "so I'm going to kill him."

"No, Yukiko-neechan's gonna kill him," Naruto corrected. "Besides, you suck as a ninja. If he's good enough to kill all your family, he'll kick your ass."

"If I suck, you suck more!"

Naruto growled, while Sasuke tried to figure out why he'd just said that. He wasn't supposed to get distracted by idiots. He had to be calm and controlled, like Ita-- like a good ninja, if he wanted to catch up to _that man_.

But what was the point anymore?

"Hey, hey, I'm talking to you! Pay attention, bastard!" Naruto snapped his fingers in Sasuke's face.

Sasuke snarled at him.

Naruto ignored the threat. "Hey, I just thought of something. You want to kill your brother, right? And Yukiko-neechan's gonna 'sassinate him. So why don't we sneak along and help her?"

Sasuke sputtered for a moment, and then fell back on glaring. "Moron. If she's good enough to kill him, she'd catch me following. And you wouldn't be there."

Naruto grinned like a cat that had just scooped a decorative fish out of a koi pond and found a way to blame the mess on a nearby dog. "I would so -- I know how to make this work. See, see, I know how to play tricks on her, _and_ I know how her missions work. She tells me all that stuff. She goes undercover with traders." He leaned in close and stage-whispered into Sasuke's ear. "Tell me where she's going. I can get us into the caravan and by the time anyone finds us, we'll be too far away for them to send us back."

Sasuke shoved the idiot away. But as he moved past Naruto, toward the stairs, he muttered, "Sky Country."

Naruto's grin itched against the back of his neck until he reached the landing and escaped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editing these chapters is an interesting opportunity to look at my younger self and her various phrasing and punctuation quirks, which generally ends with me beating my head against my computer desk and saying, "But _why_ did you think that was a reasonable way to write a sentence???" after which I remove as many dashes and semi-colons as I can without destroying the sense of any given passage.
> 
> I wonder what the me of 2025 will make of stories I'm writing now...


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Fifth, in which Yukiko accidentally sets Iruka on Kakashi, Eiji attempts to cook breakfast, Naruto is shocked to learn that Sasuke may not remember how to have fun, and Yukiko meets Seichi's cover persona, to her great annoyance.

Iruka tended to drop by Yukiko's building at least once a week to take Naruto out for ramen, so there wasn't usually any need for her to visit him. She did have a standing invitation from his great-aunt, but it would be more polite (and probably safer, all things considered) to call than to appear out of the blue.

Yukiko dragged the phone directory out of her desk and thumbed through it. The Umino number had no address attached to it, naturally -- ninja never gave away their locations if they could help it. Most didn't even list their phone numbers, but Iruka needed to be available when parents had concerns over his students. Yukiko wondered if that made his aunt twitchy. _She_ occasionally got twitchy about the unfortunate business necessity of having her address listed, and she hadn't grown up in a family saturated with ninja paranoia. Umino Sadako had. She had to care a lot about Iruka to let him reveal anything about their home.

Yukiko raised her phone and dialed. There was a brief pause while somebody at the closely guarded central switchboard read the numbers and connected her to Iruka's line. The phone picked up on the third ring.

"Ayakawa Yukiko calling," she said.

"Um, hello," answered Iruka. "Do you need me to come over?"

Iruka was a sweetheart, Yukiko thought as she twirled the phone cord in her fingers. He could hear that she wasn't hurt or panicking, but she never called him, so... "My mission got rescheduled because of Uchiha Itachi," she told him. "I leave tomorrow morning. I wanted to ask you to check on Naruto while I'm gone, and check on Uchiha Sasuke as well -- did I tell you he's living across the hall from Naruto now? Anyway, Naruto isn't thrilled, so he might skip lessons tomorrow. Don't kill him if he does, but I'd be grateful if you'd stop by to make sure he and Sasuke haven't killed each other. You know how kids are."

"You didn't tell me about Sasuke, but Naruto did," Iruka said with an audible smile. "He talked my ear off while I was grading -- for once, I actually wanted him to sneak off in search of ramen. I'll keep an eye on them." He shifted; something clinked and scraped, and Yukiko heard a sizzle on the other end of the line.

"Am I interrupting dinner?"

"Not yet," Iruka said, with the particular tone of voice that meant he was laughing at her but wouldn't admit it. "While you're on the line, do you know if Naga's still in the hospital? I was thinking of visiting her again this evening, but I just realized she might have signed out."

Oh, shit. Iruka, with his protective tendencies, was not going to react well to Naga's new mission. In fact, Yukiko wouldn't put it past him to break into Kakashi's apartment and attack the jounin. She didn't know how or when Iruka had found Kakashi's home, but he occasionally took advantage of that knowledge to ambush and yell at their self-proclaimed sensei. He'd also showed _Naruto_ the apartment, which was cruel and unusual punishment for both the kid and Kakashi. Yukiko had always suspected Iruka was hiding something devious behind his blushes and smiles; she considered that little maneuver proof positive that she'd been right.

"Yukiko? Yukiko?" Iruka's voice broke into her thoughts. "What's wrong with Naga?"

"She took a mission," Yukiko said, deciding to get everything in the open as fast as possible. "I don't have details, but she and Kakashi are tracking Uchiha Itachi, starting tomorrow."

The phone was ominously silent for a long moment. Then something clattered to the floor and Yukiko heard the click of a stovetop burner turning off.

"Excuse me," Iruka said with exquisite calm. "I have to go kill Kakashi." He hung up.

"Shit." Yukiko threw down the receiver and raked her hands through her hair. That hadn't gone well. Iruka couldn't hurt Kakashi unless he got ridiculously lucky, of course, but now and then a casual comment sent the jounin off on some strange, internal tangent and made him vanish for several days. They hadn't figured out all his triggers, but talking about responsibility and dead teammates was high on the list and Iruka had sounded angry enough to try unbalancing Kakashi on purpose. This was absolutely not the time for that.

Yukiko picked up the phone and dialed another number. This one she knew by heart since she'd called Taizen several times to discuss zoning loopholes and the best way to approach the council for permission to remodel her new building. She was fairly sure somebody would be home.

"It's Yukiko," she said when the phone picked up. "Naga?"

"Yeah. Want me to get my mother?"

"No. I told Iruka about your mission and he said he's going to kill Kakashi. You might want to head him off."

"Why? Iruka can't touch-- oh, right." Naga groaned. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Can't afford to let Kakashi get weird now, but how do I stop Iruka when I don't know where Kakashi lives?"

"Somewhere near the southeastern wall," Yukiko said. "Beyond that, you're a ninja. Track him! Good luck, and I hope you kill Uchiha Itachi very thoroughly and painfully. He deserves it." She hung up before Naga could reply.

"Great. Just great." Yukiko rubbed the bridge of her nose and stared out her office window for a minute. She really hoped this wasn't a bad omen for her mission. Then she knocked the heel of her hand against her temple. "Don't be superstitious," she ordered herself, and pulled open the file drawer that held the latest invoices, rent payments, and bank statements. She had a few more things to put in order before she left.

\---------------

"Daddy! You promised to help me cook breakfast today!"

The hoarse whisper splashed into Eiji's dreams, reeling him up out of sleep. He blinked gritty eyelids, half-expecting to see Ginji standing over a dead assassin and glaring at him for sleeping through a fight. Instead, his daughter's vivid blue eyes hovered bare inches from his face. Thin sunlight streamed past her from the far window. Judging by the angle, it was far too early for Mitsuko to be up.

"Mitsu-chan? What's wrong?"

Mitsuko stood on tiptoes and poked his shoulder. "You have to get up and teach me to cook miso and rice and everything. You promised, Daddy! Last night you said I couldn't make Mommy breakfast for her birthday unless someone taught me to cook, and then I asked who would teach me, and Uncle Ginji said _you_ could, and you smiled. 'Silence implies consent,' Daddy -- you always say that. So it's like you agreed, and that's like a promise. So get up!"

Beside Eiji, Tetsuko groaned and tugged the blanket up over her face. "Anata, fix whatever is bothering our daughter and let me sleep."

"Your wish is my command," Eiji said, leaning over to kiss her ear. Then he clambered out of bed and adjusted the covers over his wife's body. "Peaceful dreams."

"Come on, Daddy!" Mitsuko said, still in her overly loud whisper. "And be quiet. Uncle Ginji's sleeping on the sofa again, and I don't want him to wake up and tell Mommy what we're cooking."

"First of all, Uncle Ginji is very good at keeping secrets," Eiji told his daughter as he tied his bathrobe. "He won't tell your mother unless you give him permission. Second, he's a shinobi. He'll hear us no matter how quiet we are, so we shouldn't even try to be quiet. If we sneak around, he might think we're thieves or assassins, and he might hurt us before he wakes up all the way and realizes his mistake."

Mitsuko's expression grew solemn. "He'd be awfully sad if he hurt us by accident. But Uncle Ginji's so fast! He'd stop in time, I know he would."

"But he'd still be sad that he came close to hurting you, Mitsu-chan, and then he'd worry that he might not be fast enough the next time," Eiji said as he followed his daughter downstairs. "So let's be a little noisy. Not too noisy, because we don't want to bother your mother, but just enough. If we worry, Uncle Ginji won't have to." He deliberately stepped on the first singing board at the foot of the stairs and hid a smile when Mitsuko started to jump on every third board. The thud of her paired feet drowned out the carefully tuned squeaks and groans, rattled the wall hangings, and set the lampshades swinging.

The sofa faced away from the stairs, but the silence emanating from it carried a tinge of amusement.

"Unless you feel up to teaching Mitsu-chan to cook, go back to sleep," Eiji said as he leaned over the sofa's back. "But next time you volunteer me for things like this, I'm going to tell Tetsuko that I saw you watching one of the waitresses at the sushi place down by Rika's office."

"I watch her because she moves wrong -- too graceful. Don't start Tetsuko playing matchmaker." Ginji cracked open his eyes, then held up a hand to shield them from the sunlight falling across his face.

"Not every civilian is as naturally clumsy as you think they are," Eiji said. "Shinobi don't have a monopoly on coordination. Maybe the girl likes to dance on her nights off -- you could ask her. It wouldn't hurt you to be more social anyway."

"Daddy!" Mitsuko gripped the kitchen doorframe, swinging back and forth. "Stop bothering Uncle Ginji and help me get the rice from the cupboards."

"It seems I'm summoned," Eiji said, laughing. "When Akiko gets here, tell her she can have the morning off. You might take her out for breakfast, too. I'm fairly sure I'll burn something and there's no need for you to suffer."

"I don't want to be social," Ginji grumbled, "and even if I did, I wouldn't start with your housekeeper. Eiji, stop being frivolous. We don't have time."

Eiji raised one eyebrow and met Ginji's blue eyes steadily. "Which one of us is in charge here? But yes, I know we have to plan for meeting Akatsuki. Bring Takeshi, Rika, and one or two of the more trustworthy missing-nin to my office at three. _Don't_ tell Tetsuko."

Something metallic crashed in the kitchen "Daddy! I dropped the pots!"

"Your office, three o'clock," Ginji said. "Good. Now go burn some rice before Mitsuko destroys the kitchen."

\---------------

Yukiko set her alarm for six and woke, as usual, five minutes before it rang. Half an hour later, a key turned in her apartment door and Naruto trudged in.

"Your missions start too early, Yukiko-neechan," he said as he plopped into a chair.

"We can't waste daylight," she told him. "Come on, kid, smile. I made you shrimp ramen and I excused you from the academy for the day -- you can do what you want, as long as you don't go too wild. I'll be back in a few weeks, and Iruka will stop by while I'm gone." She set a bowl down in front of the kid and ruffled his spiky hair. "Hey, maybe you'll even get to be friends with Sasuke. Wouldn't it be fun to have a boy as a friend, as well as Shinnin and Sakura?"

"Maybe," Naruto said. He leaned over his ramen bowl and took a deep breath. "But not that jerk. Kiba's cooler, or maybe Tora or Shikamaru. They don't act like they're better than everyone else, _and_ they know how to have fun. That jerk never has fun. He just frowns and glares _all the time_ , Yukiko-neechan, and nobody's really like that. Nobody's that messed-up, right?"

"He never has fun, huh?" Yukiko stirred her miso thoughtfully. "You know, the Uchiha were really big on formality and duty, so I bet Sasuke spent most of his time training instead of playing. And he was the son of the clan head, so his father could have ordered the rest of his family not to distract him. Sasuke might not know how to have fun."

Naruto looked skeptical. "Everyone knows how to have fun, Yukiko-neechan."

"Maybe everyone starts out knowing, but a lot of people forget. It's one of the sad things about growing up."

Naruto, spoon still in his mouth, made a disgusted face. "I'm not gonna forget! But maybe the jerk forgot. That'd make me angry, so maybe that's why he's always pissed off. Hey, hey, I bet I can make him remember how to have fun!"

Yukiko concealed a wince. "I'm sure you can, but don't play any tricks on Sasuke without running them by me. Remember, he just lost all his family, so I don't think he'd appreciate jokes right now."

Naruto mumbled something into his ramen. Yukiko gave him a pointed look, and he sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I'll go easy on him."

"Kid, I know what you mean by 'going easy.' That's not going to cut it. Promise me: no tricks on Sasuke until I get back from my mission, and even then, you ask me first so I can make sure they're harmless."

"I promise I won't play any jokes on the jerk until after you say they're okay," Naruto said. "You're mean, Yukiko-neechan. Who am I s'posed to play jokes on now?"

"Iruka," Yukiko said, blithely sacrificing her friend. "I'm sure he'll understand. And don't tease Sasuke either," she added as an afterthought. She did her best to look unmoved when Naruto pouted.

Ten minutes later, she shooed the kid out of her apartment and checked her preparations one last time. She'd packed a traveling bag with a few changes of clothes, some snacks, a book for slow hours, and, of course, her wallet, a checkbook, an account book, and letters of reference from various traders and shop owners. Those were absolutely legitimate, acquired while making purchases for her family, and they were the third most important part of her cover.

The second most important part was her appearance. She was wearing ninja-style sandals, but a lot of civilians wore those for long trips -- they were easy to walk in and gave good arch support -- so that wouldn't be too suspicious. Beyond that, she'd done her best not to look like a ninja. She'd pulled her hair up in a high ponytail to make herself look younger, she'd dressed in a knee-length skirt rather than her usual pants, and she'd even ventured a touch of lipstick.

She couldn't bring weapons, since Amane Eiji employed missing-nin and they'd probably search her bags. She could pass off a single spool of wire as packing supplies, and one knife as a sensible precaution for a woman traveling through uncertain territory, but beyond that she was unarmed.

"This would kill a weapons-master," Yukiko muttered as she looked down at her collection of kunai, shuriken, and trap supplies. Her forehead protector draped, lifeless and accusing, on top of the pile. She touched the metal plate one last time, tracing her fingers over the leaf symbol, then shoved the mess into a cupboard with her baking sheets.

Naruto had gotten annoyingly good at picking the locks on her safe and filing cabinets, but the kid wouldn't look through her cooking supplies, not when she'd left a crate of instant ramen cups in plain sight. He was bad enough with buckets, paints, and the blunted weapons the academy issued. She didn't want to think what he could get up to with good knives and trap materials.

Yukiko paused as a sudden thought hit her. Sasuke had brought real weapons from his old house. If he and the kid got to be friends...

She shook her head. Whatever might happen in the future, right now those two wouldn't give each other the time of day, and that wasn't likely to change in the month she was gone. If it did, well, that was Iruka's problem.

Yukiko locked her apartment door and crossed the hall to make sure she'd left her office in order. The plans for her new building were laid neatly on her desk, and Yusuke's drawer in the left-hand filing cabinet had a blank check in case the boiler died before Yukiko got back to deal with it. "Naruto, touch this and _DIE_ ," she scribbled on a piece of scrap paper, and left the message on top of the architect's blueprints.

Then she locked her office, slipped out of her building, and left herself behind.

If she'd been on better terms with her uncle and had been thinking long-term before her first intelligence mission, she would have built a complete cover identity. It was easy enough to pass as either a bit younger or older than her actual twenty-four years, and Intelligence could have forged records for a fictitious second daughter of Ayakawa Yukina and Aoi. But she'd used her real name on that swing through Wave and River Countries. Now it would look suspicious if an unknown sister suddenly took over her business contacts.

Intelligence had done what they could to paper over that lapse. Heika-san had buried Yukiko's true current service records, letting people think that she'd quit again to look after her business. If anyone looked deeper, they'd find classified documents assigning her an extended B-rank mission to guard, observe, and indoctrinate Naruto, which was just close enough to the truth to stop most further inquiries. She rarely wore her chuunin vest; she had Yusuke tell people she was out of town on purchasing trips, not spying missions; she wove distraction genjutsu over the yard before she practiced taijutsu or weapons; and she hoped no targets ever got paranoid or clever enough to seriously investigate her background.

She wondered what cover Seichi used. He'd have to change his name, for a start. The Fuuma weren't an especially powerful ninja clan, but they were known, and he'd have a hard time hiding the darkness in his eyes if anyone looked closely.

Yukiko slowed to an amble as she came in sight of the eastern gates. When the guards looked her way, she waved casually to one of them -- her old classmate Hikari -- who smiled sourly and held out a hand for Yukiko's papers. Hikari examined them for nearly three minutes, which was two minutes and thirty seconds longer than necessary, in Yukiko's opinion. Then she pushed one side of the massive gate open with a deceptive ease meant to remind foreigners and civilians of the Leaf's strength. That it also reminded Yukiko that Hikari was a taijutsu expert while Yukiko had barely passed the taijutsu graduation requirements was an unspoken bonus.

Yukiko put on her best 'dumb civilian' smile. "Wow! Those gates are awfully big. You're a lot stronger than you look, huh? Can you do ninpou too, like explosions and illusions?"

"None of your business, and you know the answer anyway," Hikari said irritably. "Go play trader like the washout you are, and get out of my face."

"How nice that we want the same thing," Yukiko murmured, and let Hikari close the gate behind her. She wasn't a washout -- she was a chuunin, Hikari's rank, and she had Intelligence clearance as well -- but she couldn't exactly proclaim that and keep her cover. Now and then, it rankled.

But this wasn't the time to think about that. Yukiko resettled her pack and walked toward the huddle of mules and people.

The eastern gate of Konoha opened onto forest, with only a narrow firebreak to separate the trees from the towering wall. On the northern side of town, the short, steep-sided plateau that held the Hokage monument and the Hokage's tower served as a natural barrier. The southern and western gates led to the cultivated parts of Konoha's valley, and were almost always barred to foreigners. Trade caravans left through the eastern gates and traveled on foot or muleback through the forest and hills, guided around the ever-shifting sentries and man-killer traps. Two trade roads ran within a day's civilian-paced walk -- one to the northeast and one to the south -- and Konoha maintained way stations where merchants could store their wagons and heavier goods while they conducted business amongst the Leaf-nin.

Kurenai beckoned Yukiko toward the group and asked for her papers. "We're waiting for two more people," she said as she scanned them, "but if they don't arrive within fifteen minutes, we'll have to leave without them. I believe one is traveling with you?"

"Yeah, a family friend," Yukiko said, just loud enough to let the nearest cluster of people overhear, without sounding like she wanted to be heard. "He helped me out recently, so I'm showing him the ropes of specialty trading in return. We'll see how it goes. I don't think showing up late is a good start."

"He isn't late yet, and with luck, all will go well," Kurenai said. "Your papers are in order, Yukiko-san. Would you like to load your bag onto one of the spare mules?"

"Yes, thanks." Yukiko busied herself tying down her pack, subtly keeping an eye out for Seichi. It was good that he'd let her arrive first, since a few of these traders were passing acquaintances of hers and now she'd laid the ground for his cover. But he hadn't seemed the type to be late.

Sure enough, she'd barely tightened the last strap when Hikari ushered a tall, rust-haired figure through the gate. Seichi was wearing the same gray duster, this time over a deep blue shirt with the top buttons undone in concession to the summer heat. A gold chain winked from around his neck, a sloppily packed bag was slung carelessly over his left shoulder, and his gait hovered between a saunter and a strut.

One of the younger women in the caravan -- dark-haired, wearing the wide sash and billowy, striped pants that were popular down in the islands these days -- gave a wolf whistle. Yukiko wasn't sure whether to join in, frown at her new partner for attracting attention, or laugh herself silly over the incongruity of an Anbu assassin playing a roguish trader -- a lady-killer, no less. She settled for standing on her tiptoes and waving.

"There you are!" she called. "Come put your bag with mine."

The whistling woman glared at her. Yukiko smiled serenely and made sure to brush against Seichi as he tried to work out how to attach his pack to the mule.

"Are we lovers?" he murmured for her ears only.

"No, but if the idiot over there irritates me too much, that could change. What's your name?"

"Still Seichi, to keep things simple, but Tsukene instead of Fuuma." He unzipped his bag, revealing rumpled clothes, several folders of plain and fancy paper, bundles of pens and pencils, a locked writing-case for ink and brushes, and at least ten decks of cards, each neatly tied with silk cords. Seichi pulled out the cards and turned to face Yukiko. "Hold these, will you?"

His eyes were still ice-blue, but the flat, deathlike emptiness was gone, replaced by a spark of humor and an easy confidence. Yukiko blinked, then let Seichi dump the cards into her arms. "Huh. I take it you gamble?"

"A little," Seichi said, rearranging his bag so it lay a bit flatter against the side of the long-suffering mule. "Just for fun, though, not high stakes -- I don't let it get in the way of business. I think I have room now."

Yukiko handed the cards back. Seichi slid them away again, except for one deck that he tucked into the pocket of his duster. "I don't know any card games except war, hearts, and two kinds of solitaire," Yukiko said as he zipped his bag shut. "How many do you know?"

"Five hundred forty-six at last count, including fifty-two variants of solitaire. I like the three variants of hearts much better," Seichi said, reaching out to grab Yukiko's right hand before she realized what he was doing. He held it up, running his scarred thumb back and forth along her fingers, and smiled. "You have good hands, Yuki-chan. Delicate enough for fancy work, but strong enough to handle the cards. Would you like me to teach you some games?"

"It would certainly make the nights more interesting," Yukiko said. She caught his fingers with her left hand and pulled them away from her. "Until then, hands off."

"Pity," Seichi said softly. Then he tilted his head and life drained out of his eyes in a heartbeat. "Cover established?"

"...For now," Yukiko said after a pause to regain her bearings.

"Good. The last trader just arrived; we'll leave in a minute. I'll circulate -- it fits the persona." Insouciance slid back over his face and he added, "I hope the idiot irritates you soon." He tucked a stray bit of hair behind Yukiko's ear, winked, and sauntered toward a middle-aged woman in traditional Wind Country robes. It took him less than a minute to make her flutter her hands in helpless, smiling laughter.

Yukiko wondered what he'd said. Then she wondered why she cared. It was just part of his cover, and no matter how nice his hands were, or how well he could pull off an outfit that by all rights should have looked cheap and tacky, there was no way she was going to forget that he was an assassin. No mooning over anybody with dead eyes or with more than twice her number of psychological issues. That was her thumb rule, and she was sticking by it.

Besides, if Seichi kept this up, sooner or later someone was going to slap him. It might even be Yukiko if he didn't drop the act and keep his hands to himself once they picked up a wagon and some privacy.

Humming tunelessly to herself, Yukiko grabbed the mule's guide rope and followed Kurenai into the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **12 September 2015:** I am so sorry about the delay. I got a new job in August; this was naturally rather distracting. But I've settled in and am therefore back to work on ch. 16 (finally finished the fight scene, yay! on to trading caravan hijinks...) so you get ch. 5 in its brand new shiny version. Which is pretty much the same as the old version, just with better punctuation and slightly less clunky opening paragraphs.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Sixth, in which Naga and Iruka visit Kakashi's apartment, Naruto and Sasuke sneak out of town, Yukiko is impressed by Kurenai's genjutsu, Seichi continues to be annoying, and the author is having way too much fun with her world-building.

"'Near the southeastern wall,' she says. 'Track him,' she says," Naga muttered as she flung herself headlong from roof to balcony to roof. " _So_ helpful, Yukiko. How do I track him if I can't get a line of sight?"

Theoretically, no building in a shinobi stronghold should be more than one or two stories high -- there was no sense building towers that would only collapse on you during battles -- but Konoha was lucky enough to stand on bedrock and the laws about secure foundations were strictly enforced. Maximum building height, therefore, was defined as 'nothing higher than reasonable.' Civilians stretched the fucking hell out of reasonable. They also clung to traditional Fire Country railings, skyways, banners, balconies, and hanging eaves, which, while they made nice footholds and saved the trouble of jumping half the streets, made it nearly impossible to get a clear field of vision unless you were a Hyuuga.

Naga scanned her options. There, one street over. That was a nice tower, a good six or seven meters taller than anything else in the neighborhood. A running start, a strong leap -- she shot her arms out and caught the crenellated edge of the roof -- momentum and retracting bones pulled her through the air -- and a neat tuck-and-roll flipped her upright in her new vantage point.

Iruka wouldn't take the streets. He tried to look harmless for civilian parents, but scrape the surface and he was shinobi to the bone. Now, soft focus, three sixty degrees, find the movement that's out of rhythm with the rest of the town...

"Got you." Only three streets over, a stroke of luck.

Iruka was fast, but Naga was faster. She caught up to him just as he kicked off a roof and landed on the side of a three-story building, scrambling toward a top-floor window. Naga anchored her feet to the eaves, pinned her knees together to keep her kimono from succumbing to gravity, and swung down in front of him.

"Screw with Kakashi and I'll kill you."

Iruka's head snapped sideways. After a heartbeat, he tucked away a half-drawn shuriken and did his best to look concerned instead of furious. "Naga, yesterday you were unconscious and nobody knew if you'd wake up. You were in the _hospital_. He has no business taking you out after someone like Uchiha Itachi."

"Not the point," Naga said. "It's _my_ decision. Itachi almost killed Tsukihime. I have to do this."

"There's a difference between taking vengeance and dying because you're not thinking straight! Uchiha Itachi could have passed the jounin exam any time he wanted to in the past two years. He was Anbu. There's no way you're a match for him, not even with Kakashi's help." Iruka scrubbed irritably at his scar. "Think how your partner will feel when she wakes up and you've gotten yourself killed."

"Ahem."

They twisted around to see Kakashi leaning out his apartment window. "Fascinating as this is -- really, Iruka, I didn't know oven mitts were ninja accessories now -- I think a bit of privacy is in order for this conversation." He leaned aside in tacit invitation.

Naga flipped herself through the window, neatly clearing Kakashi's bed. She looked around as Iruka climbed in after her, not bothering to be discreet. There was no point, not with Kakashi, who could read people like open scrolls.

Kakashi's apartment was all one room, with a tiny bathroom off in one corner. Against the far wall he had a bookcase full of porn, a weapons chest, and a surprisingly well-stocked kitchen; the back wall held the bathroom and closet; and a coffee table and an overstuffed armchair stood next to the door. His bed was jammed right under the window, against a broad sill that ran the length of the outer wall. He seemed to use the sill as a shelf; it held a few loose books, three potted plants, and two pictures right behind his pillow.

One was a snapshot of Yukiko, Iruka, and Naga all yelling and waving their arms at Kakashi, who was ignoring them in favor of a little orange book. The other was an official genin team portrait: a black-haired boy with goggles, a cheerful girl with tattooed cheeks, a sour-looking Kakashi (with gray hair and a mask even as a kid, though he had two dark eyes instead of a Sharingan), and a strangely familiar blond man, smiling like a fool as he ruffled the boys' hair.

"Do I pass inspection?" Kakashi asked, his visible eyebrow raised.

"Your quilt has shuriken on it," Naga said, for lack of a better response. What she wanted to say was, 'Why do you sleep with your head right under a window, you crazy bastard? Are you suicidal or just that cocky?' -- but this wasn't time to ask personal questions. It also wasn't time to ask about his old team, or how and why Kakashi had acquired a snapshot from her mother's photo collection.

"Ah," Kakashi said, looking pleased. "I just bought that last month. I think the pattern suits the décor. Don't you agree, Iruka-kun?"

Iruka pinched the bridge of his nose and took a several deep breaths. He seemed to get a choke-hold on his temper before his face turned any color more interesting than red.

"Hatake-san," Iruka said icily. "I understand that Naga's bloodline limit and taijutsu skills would, under other circumstances, make her a reasonable addition to a _team_ assigned to hunt Uchiha Itachi. You are not a team. You are one man. Furthermore, no ninja should take such a dangerous mission so soon after being hospitalized, and vengeance is less important than the ability to successfully complete the mission. I would appreciate it if you would act like the adult and authority figure you're supposed to be and not encourage my friend to endanger your mission and _kill herself!_ "

Kakashi closed his eye.

Naga wrapped her foot around Iruka's shin and snapped her leg forward. He rolled with the fall and shot back to his feet in a heartbeat, but she'd made her point.

She loosened her shoulders, trying to make her posture counteract her stupid kimono. "Enough. First, I'm chuunin. I make my own damn choices. Kakashi gets no say until we start the mission. Second, I was in the hospital for genjutsu aftereffects, not injuries; I'm not deadweight. Third, I won't die. Itachi will." She smiled at Iruka. "Painfully."

"I think efficiency is more important than pain, myself." Kakashi opened his eye and dropped the happy-go-lucky mask. "Iruka-san, your concern does you credit, but there is a time and a place for such care and this is not the time. If someone killed your students, if that person were declared a target, and if you had the skills required to track and kill that person, neither Naga nor I would interfere if you chose to join a tracking or assassination mission." He shrugged, leaving the obvious corollary unspoken.

Then Kakashi crouched and scooped a giant blue mitten from his floor -- an oven mitt, Naga realized after several seconds' blank confusion -- and offered it to Iruka. "We seem to have interrupted your dinner. My apologies."

Iruka flushed, grabbed the mitt, and shoved it inside his vest.

Naga studied the two men. "We done? I'm supposed to be waiting tables. And I need to pack."

Kakashi tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. Iruka scowled. "Are you sure about this, Naga?"

"Yes."

"Then yes, we're done. I apologize for disturbing you, Kakashi-san, and for revealing the location of your home without asking permission." Iruka nodded. A hint of movement in his shoulders converted the curt gesture into the shadow of a polite bow.

Kakashi melted into a slouch and leer; Naga grabbed Iruka's sleeve in anticipation. "Ah, it's only Naga-chan! I'm sure I'd have invited her up here sooner or later. After all, a bachelor should never turn away a woman, especially not one who wears a kimono so well!"

"Tomorrow, eight-thirty, west gate," Naga said, and dragged Iruka out the window before a new argument could start.

\---------------

Sasuke woke shortly after dawn and spent the next hour or so trying unsuccessfully to go back to sleep. At six thirty he gave up, showered, and forced himself to eat a bowl of miso soup. At seven, Naruto knocked on his door.

"Hey, bastard! Yukiko-neechan's leaving. Grab your stuff and let's go."

He scooped up his pack and opened the door. Naruto was standing there, grinning, with a bag slung over his shoulder. The idiot was also wearing his usual bright orange pants and jacket.

"Change your clothes," Sasuke said.

Naruto looked blank.

"We're trying not to be seen, moron. Orange is too visible."

"Oh! Yeah, you're right. Hang on." Naruto unlocked the door across the hall and vanished inside. He left the door open, though, whether on purpose or by accident, and Sasuke found himself drifting over to look into the moron's apartment. It was a mirror of his own -- kitchen along one wall, bed against the other, and a tiny closet and bathroom in the back -- and surprisingly clean, even if the idiot's idea of extra furniture was limited to a battered couch and a bunch of open boxes. At least the boxes seemed to be organized. They were also labeled, though the kanji were only semi-legible.

Naruto emerged from his closet wearing black pants (with orange stripes) and a blue shirt (with a hand-painted orange spiral on the front). "Better?" he asked. Sasuke nodded. "Then let's go. We've got to hurry so we get to the way station before everybody else. They lead civilians in circles, but they go pretty fast, and I'm not _'zactly_ sure where the way station is, and we have to watch out for traps."

He shut his apartment door -- he forgot to lock it; Sasuke didn't remind him -- and dashed for the stairs. Sasuke followed, trying to remember when, exactly, he'd agreed to this plan, and why he'd thought it was a good idea. He wasn't strong enough to fight Ita-- to fight _that man_ , not yet. He'd only get in the way.

But to just sit back and let someone kill his brother...

He trailed Naruto behind the building, and over to the village wall. It towered above them, meter upon meter of smooth, reinforced wood. "We can't use the gate, 'cause they'd never let us out, or they'd report us, so we have to climb the wall," Naruto said. He grinned conspiratorially. "Hey, Yukiko-neechan doesn't know, but I've done this lots of times. I'm practicing so I can climb the Hokage monument!"

Sasuke turned from the wall to stare at the moron. "Why?"

"Because! Everybody's too chicken to touch the monument, and I wanna see how long it takes people to notice if I sit on the First Hokage's hair, or maybe the Fourth's nose. I was gonna paint stuff on them, but I bet Iruka-sensei and Yukiko-neechan would make me clean it up after, and that'd be a pain. So now I think I'll just bring some water balloons or paint bombs and throw 'em down at people. Besides, I'm gonna be Hokage someday, so it's not like I need to be scared of a bunch of statues!"

"You won't be Hokage," Sasuke said, turning to look at the wall instead of the moron's squint-eyed grin. "The Hokage is the strongest shinobi in Konoha. You can't even do Henge right, you're clumsy, you're slow, and you're stupid. Nobody would choose you to protect the village and lead other shinobi." His mind jumped involuntarily to his father, and then to Ita-- "Nobody would listen to you," Sasuke continued. "Nobody respects you. Nobody trusts you."

In the corner of his eye, he saw Naruto draw himself up, reddening. Sasuke was sure the moron would pitch a tantrum and forget about his grand plans... and then Naruto took a deep breath and kicked the wall instead. "I'm not stupid," he said flatly. "Maybe I suck at book stuff, but I make awesome plans. I'm _good_ at being sneaky. And the rest of it's none of your business, bastard. Now come on. I cut handholds, and I have a rope to get down the other side."

There was a better way to climb walls. Sasuke knew that; he'd seen his family stride blithely up vertical surfaces as if they were walking on level ground. But he didn't know the trick, and Naruto _had_ done a good job cutting the handholds.

Sasuke skipped as many of them as he could, kicking off from toeholds and jumping instead of inching from one slash to the next. He flipped awkwardly onto the narrow walkway almost at the top of the wall and tried to even his breathing.

"Show-off," Naruto grumbled as he scrambled onto the walkway a full minute behind Sasuke.

Sasuke ignored him.

"Sky Country's northeast, right?" Naruto asked. Sasuke nodded. "Yeah, I thought so. Okay, the way station's a couple miles north of where the road crosses the river. So we climb down, go behind the Hokage monument, and follow the river upstream. The traders prob'ly have a bunch of wagons, and they either left them at the way station or somebody took them around while they were in Konoha. If we hide under a bunch of stuff or in some big sacks, nobody will notice us. But there's always a ninja at the way station, 'cause of bandits and stuff, so we have to be really sneaky."

_This_ was Naruto's plan?

"You really are a moron," Sasuke said. "I can't get past a real shinobi without being noticed. There's no way you can."

"Hey, hey, I can so sneak past real ninja! Yukiko-neechan's teaching me how to set traps and stuff, and she lets me practice sneaking into her office, and Taizen-san lets me sneak into her building, and I get out of class without Iruka-sensei noticing sometimes, and I sneaked into the Fourth's office once, and I even dyed Kakashi-baka's hair and stole his pervert book twice, and _he's_ a _jounin_. So there!" Naruto folded his arms and glared at Sasuke, with the air of someone who'd delivered a winning argument and knew it.

"You wear bright orange," Sasuke said, glaring right back. "That's the most conspicuous color there is. You crash around like a drunk ox in a teahouse and you can't keep your voice down. You couldn't sneak past a blind civilian."

"Jerk."

"Moron."

"Stop calling me that!" Naruto kicked at Sasuke's shin, and then made a face. "And stop distracting me. We have to hurry, remember?" He fished a coil of rope -- genuine shinobi cord, both strong and thin -- from his pack, along with a pair of fingerless gloves. Then he looked at Sasuke's hands and frowned. "Um, do you have gloves? I kinda forgot to bring extras, and rope burns hurt really bad, and your hands are already hurt."

"I'll be fine." Sasuke touched the fraying bandages around his palms, feeling the tender mess of healing scratches and cuts. He could deal with a little pain.

Naruto shrugged and swiftly tied a loop of rope over one of the trunks that formed the wall. The knot looked vaguely familiar -- something like a slipknot, but not exactly -- and Sasuke hoped the moron had been telling the truth about being good with traps. "You first," Naruto said. Sasuke drew a deep breath, climbed over the pointed top of the wall, and skidded down in a semi-controlled slide, feet braced against the wood and the rope hissing through his hands.

Naruto was right; rope burns hurt a lot.

"You didn't have to hurry _that_ much," Naruto said when his own feet hit the ground. "Idiot."

Sasuke glared, but Naruto ignored him and twitched the rope sideways with a slight twisting motion. The knot popped loose and the rope tumbled down to hang in uneven coils over Naruto's shoulders.

"Wrap it while we walk," Sasuke said, and headed north over the firebreak to the scrubby edge of the forest.

Stumbling over a loop of rope, Naruto followed.

\---------------

Yukiko walked beside the laden mule, reins held loosely in her right hand. Now and then she leaned in, patted the animal's shoulder, and praised it for keeping up a good pace despite the uneven footing. Kurenai had quickly abandoned anything that passed for a path and was leading the caravan over a rich mulch of fallen leaves, moss, and tangled tree roots, pausing now and then to veer around stands of underbrush or well-concealed traps.

They headed directly northeast for about ten minutes, after which Kurenai began to circle. Five minutes after that, a subtle genjutsu rippled out and settled around the caravan. Yukiko forced herself to accept it at first -- she recognized Kurenai's chakra signature, and this was too gentle to be anything more than a minor perception shift.

After nearly twenty minutes, though, her curiosity won over her common sense and she prodded lightly at the genjutsu, trying to figure out exactly what Kurenai was doing. Most ninja guides just circled a lot while leading civilians out of Konoha. Without a compass and under the dense forest canopy, that was more than enough to confuse most people's direction sense.

Yukiko stared upward, waiting until a tiny gap in the leaves let a sliver of direct sunlight through. The sun was ever so slightly to the left; they were heading east southeast. She closed her eyes, gently disentangled herself from Kurenai's genjutsu -- it clung more than she was expecting and tendrils kept trying to wrap back around her -- and looked up again. When the sun flashed through the next tiny gap, it was on her right. Huh. Kurenai was leading them northeast, almost on a direct line to the way station.

That was actually very clever. Circling was an effective misdirection technique, but it took time and meant that caravans often didn't reach the way stations until well after dark. This genjutsu let Kurenai skip at least half the detours without compromising security. By the time she finished fiddling with the traders' perceptions, not a single one would be able to lead invaders to within five miles of the valley, let alone Konoha itself.

Of course, ninja invaders wouldn't need to be guided, but these precautions weren't aimed at other shinobi. They were aimed at the feudal lords of Fire Country and they had proved effective for nearly seventy-five years, ever since the First Hokage had gathered the scattered ninja clans and schools and founded a stronghold in a rich but sparsely-populated valley near the infamous Forest of Death.

"Coin for your thoughts?" Seichi asked, dropping back from his conversation with the Wind Country woman. His hand drifted to rest on her shoulder.

"Just admiring Kurenai's genjutsu," Yukiko said softly. "She has a deft touch, very persuasive. I shook the illusion off for a minute and it wrapped me up again the second I stopped paying attention. Barely one in twenty illusionists can reattach genjutsu once a person is aware of the trick -- it's why genjutsu is so useless in open fights -- but I think Kurenai has the knack. If she has a partner to act as a distraction, she could probably make an enemy forget her even in the middle of a battle."

"Useful. But I asked the trader, not the spy." Seichi's voice was soft and flat. His fingers tightened over a nerve cluster, just hard enough to send a hot rush of pain down Yukiko's arm.

Then his hand slid down toward Yukiko's waist and his voice snapped back to the cheerful drawl of his cover persona. "Do you only buy for old Yutaro or do you trade a bit on the side as well? _I'd_ buy junk from you in a heartbeat, let alone specialty goods. But then, I've always had a soft spot for women with pretty hair." One ice-blue eye closed in a lazy wink.

Yukiko frantically shuffled mental gears. "My business is property-based, so I don't have goods to sell, but I do carry samples for my cousin Yuichiro's cloth shop -- those are in my second bag -- and I take a percentage of any sales I arrange for him. And if I see a good deal on something that I can unload later, obviously I won't pass it up."

She shrugged off his hand. He was coming too close to her one concealed knife and she didn't want an assassin in her personal space with a weapon in his hand. Seichi could almost certainly kill her with his bare fingers, but edged weapons strung tension along her nerves in a way that theoretical taijutsu skills couldn't match.

"What makes a good deal, Yuki-chan?" Seichi asked, catching her fingers in his. "You don't mind if I call you Yuki-chan, do you?"

"Yes, I do mind." Yukiko scowled. This was only a cover persona, not Seichi's real attitude -- probably -- but she really would slap him if he didn't tone down the smarmy flirting. "As for deals, it's hard to say," she continued. "It depends on the price, and your route, and on knowing what's popular and what's scarce in various places. I can usually trade Fire Country medicines in return for a good deal on silk or dyed linen -- I resell the cloth to Yuichiro -- but there aren't any shortcuts. You have to put in the time and get a feel for the flow of trade."

She shifted his grip on her hand, lacing their fingers together. The foot of space between their bodies was just enough to blunt the edge of her tension, but regardless of Yukiko's nerves or her irritation, she and Seichi needed to act close. A physical relationship was the best excuse for sharing a wagon and seeking privacy at night, and that privacy -- especially in a closed area that she could seal with a sound-based genjutsu -- would be very useful.

"Who here knows you?" Seichi whispered into her ear, leaning down so close that Yukiko felt his breath trickle over her skin. His voice had gone flat again.

Yukiko wished he'd stop flipping personas; it was hard to know how to react to him. "The brother and sister from Grass Country -- you can tell them by the hats -- traveled with me just before the monsoons last winter, but we didn't talk much. They won't be trouble. That stocky man two mules ahead, though, with the boy in tow -- that's Akibana Yoshitaka. He's from Konoha, he knows me, and he knows my uncle." A thought struck her, and she frowned. "Does your cover require you to be from Konoha itself?"

"Aha. Discrepancies." Seichi's fingers twitched. "No. I can come from anywhere in Fire Country. What works best?"

Yukiko patted the mule absently as she considered the options. "Yoshitaka-san sells medicines and medical tools, so he travels very widely, but he sells mostly to hospitals and town doctors, not to farm families. A farm is safest, probably one near the Forest of Death. Very few people go there, so it would be hard to disprove your origins, and if we have to fight, growing up in that area would explain a reasonable amount of skill."

"I'll alter my papers," Seichi said. "Luckily, I'm quite skilled at forgery -- good hands, you know." His voice had settled back into a drawl and mischief seeped into his eyes, veiling the ice, as he added, "My offer to teach you card tricks still stands."

"Right," Yukiko said, deciding to figure out Seichi's persona shifts later. For now, she'd just play to whichever face he was displaying. At the moment that was a young man from an isolated farm, who, despite his roguish attitude and extensive travels, was still ignorant about a trader's life and the social dynamics of a caravan.

"If you teach me card games, I'll owe you," she said, "and besides, I promised to show you the ropes. Let's trade lessons for lessons."

Seichi nodded.

"Okay. Here's my first lesson for you: traders thrive on information, maybe half of which is business-related, and two thirds of which is shameless gossip." She grinned up at Seichi and pointed at the Wind Country woman with their joined hands. "You spent nearly half an hour talking to that woman. Tell me all about her."

"Always working," Seichi murmured. "I see why you're so successful. Tonight, I'll teach you a game called 'daimyo' -- I think you'll like it. And I think," he said, reaching over with his free hand to tap Yukiko's nose, "that I'm going to enjoy this trip... Yuki-chan."

He winked.

Yukiko leaned her head against the mule's neck and groaned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a lot of changes in this chapter beyond the usual punctuation stuff. My apologies for the continuing delays.
> 
> (Trivia point: the card game Seichi decides to teach Yukiko is a fantasy world variant of [Mao](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_\(card_game\)), which is a wonderful pastime if you like logic puzzles and/or annoying your friends. *grin*)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Seventh, in which Kakashi and Naga talk about summoning, Sasuke has issues, Eiji and Ginji talk about ninja politics, Sasuke has more issues, Naruto continues to make cunning plans, and Yukiko gets a temporary break from POV-character duties.

Kakashi was chronically late, but Naga didn't know if that extended to serious A- and S-rank missions. She made sure to be at the west gate ten minutes early, just in case he switched patterns. As it happened, Kakashi _was_ late -- but only by five minutes, not his usual half hour or more.

He handed the non-classified part of their mission description to the guard on duty, who scanned it, nodded, and shoved open the massive gate. Naga settled her pack onto her shoulders and followed Kakashi out of the village.

A person looking out the west gate of Konoha would never realize she was in a hidden village. A heavily traveled road wound through fertile farmland, without so much as a single stand of trees arranged to conceal the massive town wall. Of course the western side of Konoha didn't need to be concealed, since the entire valley it faced was hidden from outsiders. Besides, it would be damn stupid to hide the village from the farmers who fed at least half the population, and whose endless fieldwork kept new genin teams too busy to cause trouble.

Naga resisted the urge to make taunting faces at the rice paddies beside the river as shades of old D-rank missions flitted through her mind. She had more important priorities now.

Kakashi tucked his hands in his pockets as Konoha slowly dwindled behind them. "We're heading for your campsite," he said. "With a bit of luck, it hasn't rained there and my dogs can pick up Itachi's trail. With a bit more luck, some of the Grass border patrols have already started tracking him. We know approximately where all the missing Uchiha were before they dropped out of contact, so once we know which direction Itachi is heading..." He shrugged. "Of course, Itachi is a genius. You escaped, so he knows we're on his trail. He may well have written off his assassination plans and decided to vanish instead."

"Sorry to make your life so hard," Naga said, irritated despite the glorious blue sky and the soothing warmth of sunlight on her shoulders.

"If you hadn't escaped we wouldn't have this chance. You made the opportunity; don't sulk because the situation is more complicated than we'd prefer." Kakashi winked. "Nobody can control all the consequences of their actions. The trick is to take advantage of the useful effects and minimize the others."

"How?"

"Ah, now that you're just going to have to learn on your own." Kakashi waved a finger under her nose, then tucked his hand back into his pocket. Naga concentrated fiercely on placing one foot exactly in front of the other and balancing just so on the balls of her feet, so she wouldn't embarrass herself by trying and failing to punch him.

"Shouldn't we be going faster?" she asked a minute later, as Kakashi held their pace to just over a lazy stroll.

"Mmm, probably. But I don't want to be exhausted when we reach the border. Why don't you summon that incredibly convenient raven of yours and ask him to carry us? That would save us a day."

Naga glared at Kakashi's back. "Kuroba-sama isn't my raven. We have a contract, and I won't insult him with frivolous summons. He's a fighter, not some cheap excuse for a horse. Besides, calling him exhausts _me_."

"You'd have the whole journey to rest," Kakashi wheedled, dropping back to her side and attempting to use Iruka's puppy-dog eye attack. He wasn't very good at it -- he had the physical movements down pat, but the emotional effect fell utterly flat.

"Stop that; you look stupid. And I said no. Once we know where Itachi is, if we really need to move fast, I'll think about calling Kuroba-sama. Not now." Naga kicked the road, raising a satisfying puff of dust. "You're supposed to be a genius. Stop being a jerk and think -- can't pick up Itachi's trail in the air. Besides, we drop in with a high-level summon, the Grass-nin would flip out. Bad first impression."

She also wasn't sure she could get Kuroba-sama's attention without the adrenaline-fueled desperation of a fight, but the reasons she'd given were perfectly valid and what Kakashi didn't know wouldn't make her feel useless.

It wouldn't hurt their mission, either, which would've outweighed any other considerations. Small ravens were better for tracking; they could get closer to the ground. Shinobi always suspected large birds, but if small ravens kept their beaks shut, they could pass for normal. And a flock of small ravens was usually more effective in a fight than a bird Kuroba-sama's size. They were much harder for enemies to target, for one thing. For another...

Well. After she'd signed her contract with Kuroba-sama and his family, her summoning instructor had demonstrated every trick he'd ever used, or even just heard of, making sure she understood the theory behind them. He'd used her as his test dummy. As a result, Naga had a very _personal_ understanding of how hard it was to keep your concentration while a flock of sharp-clawed birds scratched, pecked, and buffeted your head and shoulders with their wings.

She stole a sideways glance at Kakashi, and wondered if she could ask a few ravens to claw his mask off. She'd known the jounin for over a year and she'd still never seen the bottom half of his face. His deliberate mysteriousness made her skin itch with curiosity, even though the fabric molded closely enough to his nose and jaw that she knew he wasn't deformed. He probably hid his face just to annoy people, but she wanted to see it for herself. Naga weighed her chances, then decided to hold off at least until she had a camera, or until they were back in Konoha so Iruka and Yukiko could help out and see as well.

"Yes, we should at least try to make a good impression on the Grass-nin -- peaceful yet strong," Kakashi said, breaking into her thoughts. He sighed theatrically. "I'm the picture of innocent sincerity, but I suppose your glares plus a giant raven would be a bit too warlike for me to offset. If that green-haired boyfriend of yours is around, it might be a different story, of course."

"Bastard."

"That's commander bastard to you, Naga-kun," Kakashi said with another wink. "Pick up the pace. We can't afford to waste time and let Itachi vanish." He darted off the path, heading northwest toward the valley's edge and the distant Grass Country border.

Naga dashed after him, cursing under her breath.

\---------------

The forest was easier to move through than Sasuke had expected. The huge trees caught the sun far above the ground, so not many plants grew between them. Old leaf mulch and moss covered the soil, except in occasional grass-filled clearings, and the cool, musty smell of earth and leaves filled the air. Cicadas sang overhead, their wavering hum accompanied by birdcalls and the irregular sounds of small animals dashing for cover. Now and then Sasuke heard something larger moving in the distance -- probably a deer, but maybe a fox or a wild pig. Giant insects and rodents didn't usually stray this far from the Forest of Death, and the larger predators steered clear of Konoha.

If Sasuke carefully ignored the occasional crunch of dry leaves or the swish of fabric, he could pretend he was alone. This was a better place to be alone than anywhere in Konoha. If he was in a park, sooner or later people showed up, no matter how well he hid. If he was in a building, sometimes when he closed his eyes the walls would warp into his parents' dojo, blood would spread across the floor, and he'd have nothing left because everyone was dead and Itachi didn't care about--

Rooms were good reminders.

But Sasuke liked the forest better.

A hand closed on his arm and jerked him backward. Sasuke spun into Naruto's grip, left hand raised to smash down on the moron's extended elbow.

Naruto flung Sasuke's right arm into his face and jumped back. "Hey, hey, calm down! And watch where you're going -- you were gonna step right into a trap. Some genius you are."

Sasuke looked over his shoulder. Naruto was right. He'd almost stepped into a pit-trap, and one that wasn't even particularly well concealed. Pathetic. Weak.

"I was going to jump," he said.

"Liar! You didn't crouch down or anything."

Sasuke favored Naruto with his best disdainful look, which he'd copied from his cousin Akaro. "Moron. A skilled shinobi could leap ten of these traps in a row, from a standing start, without giving any sign beforehand."

Naruto stuck out his tongue and pulled a face. "Yeah, yeah, but you're still at the academy, just like me. And maybe you can fight better -- _maybe_ \-- but I'm stronger than you are, and I couldn't jump that without running. Stop acting like you're better than me. And come on, we have to hurry!"

Naruto turned his back on Sasuke and charged around the pit trap, as if it hadn't even occurred to him that Sasuke wouldn't follow. Sasuke fumed at the implications. He wasn't following Naruto, even if this was the moron's plan. He wasn't Naruto's friend, or teammate, or even his equal. He was _better_. He had to be better. He didn't need anybody's help. This entire plan was impossible and a waste of time; he should turn around and go back to Konoha.

Sasuke fought himself for all of ten seconds -- a very long time, really -- before he burned his list of objections and sprinted ahead of the moron.

He felt like he'd torn off a piece of himself, but when Naruto cocked his head and grinned, Sasuke almost smiled back. Then his palms throbbed, still tacky with blood and fluid from popped blisters. He clenched his fists instead. "Slowpoke," he said. "Try to keep up."

"Bastard," Naruto panted, but he didn't really sound angry.

Sasuke scowled, and ran faster.

\---------------

Ginji's internal clock was accurate nearly to tenths of a second. Therefore, when Eiji's office window slid open at precisely three o'clock and a dark figure slipped in with a rustle of fabric -- the shinobi's equivalent of a polite cough -- Eiji only glanced up to prove that he wasn't being complacent and making himself an open target for assassins.

"Rika is bringing Takeshi," he said. "They should be here any minute."

"Roll down your sleeves and button your collar," Ginji told him. Eiji quirked an eyebrow. "I'm filling in for Tetsuko," Ginji said dryly.

A brisk knock echoed through the office before Eiji could answer. Without waiting for an invitation, Shio Rika shoved the door open and strode over to Eiji's desk. "Boss," she said, nodding in his direction and tucking her work gloves under her belt. "We'll have the _Trailing Mist_ loaded by five and ready to catch the tide, but I ought to get back in case some idiots need their heads knocked together. Will this take long?" Behind her, Takeshi crossed his heavy arms and leaned patiently against the doorframe.

"Probably not," Eiji said, shuffling the warehouse inventory sheets into a pile and weighting them against the breeze from the open window. He looked toward Ginji.

Ginji shook his head. "No. But I need to talk to you, after." He flicked his fingers toward the window and shrugged minimally. Shinobi business, then.

Eiji sighed. "Fine. Rika, I assume Takeshi told you about Akatsuki, the group of missing-nin who helped him in River Country?" She nodded. "I've decided to meet with a member of the group, to see if they'd make useful allies against the hidden villages. Ginji will run close security on the messenger and me, which means he won't be available to break up any fights by the docks. You need to settle things with the new security forces -- pick some shift bosses, establish procedures for fights -- so you'll be ready to handle any problems. Talk to Ginji if you need information on any particular shinobi."

He shifted his gaze toward Takeshi. "I want you at the first meeting, to make sure your report of the incident matches the shinobi's account. Do you trust your second to take the _Crane_ on a short run along the bay?"

Takeshi frowned. "Why? Crew won't cause trouble. They know what's good for them."

"I know," Eiji said. "But at least some of them have seen these mysterious shinobi. If negotiations go sour, I don't want Akatsuki to get ideas about 'removing' potential witnesses who could report them to their original villages."

Takeshi's frown deepened as the thought struck home. "Damn. Send them off."

"Good. Rika, on your way out, please tell Tetsuko to plan a short voyage for the _Crane_ and see if we can clear out one of the warehouses while we're at it. I'm expecting several overland trade caravans this coming month and we need space. Don't mention Akatsuki. Thank you both." Eiji handed the inventory sheets to Rika.

"No problem," Rika said. "Say, you want me to take Mitsu-chan off your hands this evening? I'm watching my nephew and another kid won't be much bother."

Eiji looked at Ginji and quirked one eyebrow. Ginji shook his head: bad security. "Thank you, but I think Tetsuko and I can manage," Eiji said.

"Your call, boss. Don't say I never tried to do anything nice for you and Tetsuko-san," Rika said with a melodramatic leer. "When the romance dies, remember this moment. This is where you started to go wrong."

"The _Trailing Mist_. Loading gangs. Heads to knock," Takeshi reminded her.

"Yeah, whatever. Later!" Rika waved the inventory sheets in a careless salute and strode out of the office. Takeshi nodded to Eiji and followed her, closing the door behind himself.

Eiji waited until he heard his employees' footsteps move down the hallway toward his wife' office and the stairs. Then he folded his hands on his desk and looked at his brother-in-law. "What did you want to tell me?"

Ginji left his position by the window and paced back and forth in front of Eiji's desk. "Two things. No, three. First, I picked two of the missing-nin. They're skilled and willing to swear personal loyalty above and beyond the standard contract. Accept them. If you do, I can work them past any Cloud investigations. That gives us an added layer of security and will help cover any reports of missing-nin presence in Tengai.

"Second, Akatsuki sent a message. Their representative is coming overland and will arrive in five to seven days, depending on travel conditions." Ginji raked a hand through his dark hair, trailing static from his bare fingers. "For the record, this group still feels fishy. A couple of the security forces have heard of Akatsuki and say they don't usually work well with others.

"Third -- and this is the problem, Eiji -- I just got a message from Hidden Cloud. Something big went down in Hidden Leaf a week ago. Nobody has details, but at least ninety percent of the Uchiha clan is dead. The Hokage sent patrols and messengers all over. Apparently the Leaf-nin are hunting the killer plus any Uchiha who were out on missions and might have survived, so all of Cloud's information on the Leaf's mission priorities is screwed up."

Ginji raked his hand through his hair again. A corona of visible sparks snapped and crackled around his shoulders, and a sharp breath of ozone filled the room. Ginji didn't seem to notice. Despite himself, Eiji felt a twinge of worry over what catastrophe could demand this much of Ginji's attention.

"Look," Ginji said, bracing his hands on Eiji's desk and leaning forward. "Cloud has always been interested in the Leaf's doujutsu bloodline limits. I told you how the council hardliners almost started a war a few years ago, trying to acquire a Hyuuga. The Raikage and the council will move heaven and earth to get hold of an Uchiha before the Leaf-nin track them all down, especially since any deaths can be blamed on whoever or whatever killed the rest of that clan. I haven't been ordered to search myself, but we'll have Cloud-nin moving back and forth through Tengai for weeks.

"This is inescapable. And our cover won't hold up. The civilians will talk, or the Cloud-nin will notice that my reports don't match the number of missing-nin in the area. They'll grab me for interrogation and when they learn that you want to discredit the hidden villages and uproot the shinobi way of life..." Ginji trailed off into meaningful silence.

Eiji steepled his fingers, blocking out everything but the simple pressure of skin on skin, and forced himself to breathe. They had come too far to lose now. He couldn't afford to panic.

After several seconds, he looked up and met Ginji's eyes. "So. We need to keep our shinobi close or they may desert and spill our secrets. But we can't keep them here or the Cloud-nin will discover them. We need to meet Akatsuki in a position of strength, but we can't appear too strong or, again, the Cloud-nin will discover our plans. And we need incentives for everyone else to keep their mouths shut. Does that cover it?"

"Yes."

"Damn." Eiji leaned back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose; he was going to have a nasty headache this afternoon. "This is shinobi business. What do you think we should do?"

"The civilians are your problem. For the missing-nin, we move faster," Ginji said promptly. "You wanted to start sending missing-nin with the ships. I'd rather indoctrinate them more before trusting them that far, but that will remove them from Tengai. If they get caught at other ports, the captains can claim they were hired locally and we'll have plausible deniability. It also keeps the missing-nin feeling obligated to us, which won't happen if we ship them off to hide in the woods or on one of the uninhabited islands."

"Explain and educate, not indoctrinate," Eiji corrected absently.

Ginji shrugged. "All education imposes an implicit ethical and behavioral code. I prefer yours, but it won't work if you only ask people to listen. You have to offer tangible benefits, and even then you have to knock heads, as Rika would put it, until you've persuaded enough people to believe the evidence."

Eiji sighed. "We can argue human nature later. For now, why don't you fetch those missing-nin. I'll button my damned collar, play daimyo, and accept their oaths."

"You're the closest thing to a daimyo this town's ever had. It isn't much of an act," Ginji said dryly. He paused with one leg out the window. "You know, sooner or later Tetsuko is going to find out how far we've gone toward putting your dreams into action. Then she's going to kill you."

"I know," Eiji said, not meeting Ginji's eyes. "But the less she knows, the better chance she has of surviving if things go wrong."

Ginji's ghost-smile flickered across his face. "Maybe. In an ideal world."

"Which is what we're trying to build. Go fetch your shinobi before something else comes up."

\---------------

"There it is." Naruto pointed -- unnecessarily -- down the hill toward the way station. It was a low, sprawling structure with brown walls and greenish-black roof tiles that did a reasonable job of blending into the forest, despite the twenty feet of clear ground that separated it from the trees. Beyond the way station the trade road stretched north and south in a broad, dusty ribbon.

"I'm not blind," Sasuke said. "Where's the guard?" He pressed himself a bit deeper into the leaf mulch under a fallen tree. A tangle of vines and underbrush hid him and Naruto from casual observers, but that didn't mean much against a high-level shinobi. Sasuke was surprised they hadn't already been noticed.

"Over there. Up on the roof, see?" Naruto pointed again.

Sasuke blinked; he hadn't actually expected an answer. He followed Naruto's finger. Yes, there was the guard, lying in a deceptively casual sprawl on the ridgepole and staring upward at the sky. From that position a shinobi could watch the road and the forest at the same time with a minimum of effort.

The moron had spotted the guard before he had. Sasuke dug his fingers into his palms. Warm fluid seeped into his sweaty, dirt-stained bandages; he'd popped another blister. "He has line-of-sight all around the building. He'll spot us no matter which direction we come from. Do you have any more brilliant plans?"

Sarcasm flew right over Naruto's head. "You'd better believe it! I have four plans!" He grinned proudly. The smile made his eyes squint shut and stretched the whisker marks on his cheeks. He looked like an idiot.

Sasuke wanted to punch the smile off his face.

Naruto stuck out his tongue. "Don't look so pissed off, bastard. I told you I'm good at plans! So, so the first plan is to wait until the caravan gets here, and we sneak in while there's people all over as a distraction. That's the safest way to get past the guard, but Yukiko-neechan might see us and then we'd be in trouble." He held up one finger.

"The second plan is that I get the guard's attention and you sneak in and hide in a wagon. I don't like that one, 'cause I'll get caught, but you're the one who _really_ needs to go -- it's your brother -- so I'll do it if I have to. But only if I have to." Naruto raised a second finger and gave Sasuke a significant look, as if trying to make sure Sasuke appreciated what he was offering to give up.

"The third plan is to pretend we're not ninja. We walk up and say we're here to surprise my sister and go trading with her, or we say we're running away from a farm, or that we're from a caravan that got attacked a long way away, or something like that." Naruto raised a third finger. Then he looked at Sasuke and frowned. "Hey, hey, if we do that, you have to change your shirt. You have that police mark on yours, so they'll know you're from a Leaf ninja clan.

"Anyway, the fourth plan is that we actually sneak past the guard, right now. 'Cause there's two of us, and if we work together we can make sure he doesn't see you _or_ me." He held up a final finger, then clenched his hand into a fist.

"So, pick a plan!"

Sasuke shoved Naruto's fist into the ground. "That's only three plans, moron -- the last one is like saying you'll grow wings and fly just because you want to."

"It is not!" Naruto protested. Then he made a face and pointed at Sasuke. "Okay, maybe it is, but that's your fault! I can't plan stuff for you to do unless you tell me what jutsu you know, and how fast you are, and stuff like that. Real ninja don't keep secrets from their teammates -- it's bad for missions. So come on! Tell me!"

"No." Uchiha copied other people's jutsu; they didn't give away their own. This wasn't a real mission, and Naruto wasn't his teammate, so Sasuke had no obligation to tell the moron anything. Besides, he didn't think fire jutsu would really help them stay unnoticed.

Naruto glared at Sasuke, his blue eyes narrowed to angry slits. "If you're gonna be such a jerk, maybe I won't help you. I can go home right now, and you'll be stuck here with no plans at all. Then you'll never know what happens to your brother. I bet it's _classified_ , and they won't tell you anything, 'cause you're just a kid and not even--"

Sasuke's world flashed red. His hands clamped around the moron's throat. He dug his thumbs in, searching for the carotid arteries to slash or the trachea to crush. Naruto thrashed, clawing at Sasuke's arms and face, distracting him from his goal. "Shut up," Sasuke hissed. "You shut up. You don't know anything!" He pulled one hand back, scrabbling for a kunai.

Naruto thrashed again, more purposefully, and pain shocked through Sasuke's body. He curled inward, arms crossed over his stomach and eyes watering. The kunai dropped from his hand, skittering over matted leaves.

"Serves you right, bastard," Naruto panted, drawing his knee back from Sasuke's crotch. He waited a few seconds, then reached over and shook Sasuke's shoulder. "Hey, hey, get over it and listen to me."

Sasuke drew a ragged breath and met Naruto's stare. "Why?"

"'Cause we still have to get into the way station," Naruto said, as calmly as if Sasuke hadn't just tried to kill him. "And you're a jerk, so we're gonna have to use plan number three. Change your shirt, then shut up and follow me. This is gonna be fun." He smiled, and offered his hand to help Sasuke sit up.

Naruto's teeth were too sharp to be normal, Sasuke noticed, and this smile was anything but reassuring.

He knocked Naruto's hand aside and sat up on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bunch of small tweaks in this chapter -- dialogue shifts, clarifications, rephrasings, etc. -- but as always, nothing that affects the plot. As for ch. 16, Yukiko and Seichi are being annoying about their conversation but I am going to rip it up and try again with a slightly lighter tone. Hopefully that will work better. *crosses fingers*


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Eighth, in which Naruto and Sasuke successfully hoodwink a grown ninja (who will feel very stupid about the incident later on), Yukiko takes Seichi up on his offer to teach her card games, Naga complains about her mother's idea of appropriate lunch foods, and Eiji has a nice, relaxing family dinner.

All Sasuke's shirts had the Uchiha crest on the backs -- it hadn't occurred to him that the symbol might be a problem. "And you said I was stupid for wearing orange," Naruto muttered. Sasuke ignored him.

He refused to borrow Naruto's shirts, which meant they had to disguise the crest somehow.

Naruto looked critically at the red and white fan symbol. "It's that ironed-on stuff, so we could pick it off. But that takes too much time, so either you cut that piece out or wear your shirt inside-out. There aren't any tags, and inside-out seams aren't any weirder than some stuff I've seen in Yukiko-neechan's cousin's shop. Of course, cut-out pieces could be kind of cool! We could say you got mauled by a rabid wolf, or that giant centipede we saw -- except then we'd have to cut _you_ up so it looked right."

Sasuke yanked the shirt away from Naruto and put it on inside-out. "There. Let's go."

"Yeah, yeah, okay. But listen! You have to agree with whatever I say, or the guard will catch us." Naruto taped a square of gauze over his left cheek and crumpled his face in deep thought. "Um... you're Harada Ichiro and I'm Yamada Shinji, and we're from Nagarehiya -- that's a big town up north on the trade road. We're running away from home so we can learn to be ninja. We'll be cousins; our moms are sisters. Got it?"

"Whatever."

"Bastard," Naruto said, but he didn't sound serious. "Now come on. We'll sneak in from the north, but we'll sneak really badly, like we don't know anything, so the guard will catch us fast." He turned away from the building and headed back into the woods.

After a second, Sasuke followed.

Sneaking badly was both harder and easier than Sasuke expected -- easier, because Naruto was suspiciously good at it, and harder, because it went against all his training. Shinobi were supposed to be silent. They weren't supposed to deliberately step on twigs and stir up dry leaves, then freeze for long seconds, waiting to see if anyone noticed. That was what civilians did.

Of course, they were pretending to be civilians, but it was demeaning to act like an idiot and pretend he didn't know better. Sasuke gritted his teeth and brushed against some thin, whippy branches; they swished and rustled as they snapped back into place. Naruto turned and gave him a thumbs-up. Sasuke dug his fingernails into his palms, making the popped blisters scream.

They made it back nearly to the edge of the woods before the guard -- a lanky man wearing a bandana over his hair -- jumped down from a tree and held out his hands. "Nice try, kids," he said around the senbon clamped between his teeth. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

Sasuke winced. Naruto, on the other hand, didn't seem even a little upset or embarrassed. He just jumped up, dusted off his knees, and grinned at the guard. "Hey, hey, you're a ninja! That's so cool! I'm Shinji and that's Ichiro. We're from Nagarehiya and we're going to Konoha so we can learn to be ninja too! Are we getting close, ninja-san?"

The guard looked them over critically. Sasuke held his breath. Two boys, dirty, sweaty, and carrying large traveling packs, shouldn't be too suspicious. His bandaged hands and the bruises and scratches from their fights should only lend weight to the story.

"What the hell happened to your face, kid?" the guard asked.

Naruto raised a hand to the bandage over his left cheek. "This? Oh, Ichiro's a jerk and he cut me when we were practicing -- see, I've got scratches all over my face!" He pointed to the whisker marks on his right cheek; he seemed to have dug his nails into them to make them more ragged and fresh. "He's better than me, but I bet if we get real training, I'll kick his butt. Hey, hey, ninja-san, are we close to Konoha? Will they let us be ninja?"

The guard shrugged. "We might, we might not, but it can't hurt to try. Come on into the way station, kids. You'll have to stay here while I tell people who you are and what you're doing." He gave them a long, considering look, and then grinned around his senbon. "Do your parents know where you are?"

Sasuke winced again, and Naruto looked vaguely ashamed. "Um," he said.

"You'll have to get their permission," the guard said. "I like you two -- you have guts, coming all this way alone -- so I hope things work out for you. I'm Shiranui Genma, by the way. Welcome to Konoha station north."

\---------------

The caravan reached the way station around four in the afternoon. They might well have arrived earlier, but Kurenai had swung well to the northwest to avoid an infestation of giant centipedes; the bugs weren't especially prone to attack humans, but they tended to spook civilians and they _were_ venomous. While the traders unloaded their mules and checked their wagons, Kurenai drew aside the station guard -- a chuunin with a bandana over his hair and a senbon held lazily in his mouth -- and reported.

Yukiko nodded to herself. The centipedes would be back in the Forest of Death or dead within the week.

"You've done guard duty on the stations, right?" she murmured to Seichi as she stowed her pack of cloth samples in one of the two communal wagons.

"Yes. Why?"

"Just making sure you're not surprised by anything. There aren't many other travelers, so we can grab a four-bed room if you'd like."

"Wasteful." He winked at her, a quick flash of blue ice. "Two beds is already one more than we'll need, Yuki-chan."

He was worse than Kakashi, Yukiko decided. And he was going to explain himself tonight, or she'd take a page from Naruto's book and do something drastic. Orange paint sounded like a good starting point.

They bought a cheap but filling dinner -- the family who currently ran the station for Konoha made yakisoba to die for; she'd have to see if she could get their recipe for Yura -- and headed up to their room. Seichi opened the door with a courtly flourish, subtly scanning the room for lurkers and traps, and waved Yukiko inside. The ceiling slanted downward from the inner wall toward the outer, and a dormer window directly opposite the door separated the two beds. A dresser stood against the left wall, facing a battered armchair on the right. Yukiko dropped her pack onto the left-hand bed and sat down.

Seichi latched the door, dropped the wooden bar into its hooks, and turned to face her, warmth draining from his eyes. "It's nice and quiet in here," he said pointedly.

Yukiko took the hint and let her head droop forward as if she were too tired to sit straight; her loose hair neatly concealed her hands. She sorted through a handful of illusions and chose two. Five seals: "Somebody else's problem," Hoshi-sensei's elegant distraction genjutsu. Seven seals: "Whisper no jutsu. There," she said, looking up and pushing her hair aside. "I put up a distraction with a sound distortion underneath, so nobody can make out exactly what we're saying even if they're suspicious enough to tear through the distraction. Silence is too conspicuous."

Seichi conceded the point with a nod and began to turn down the covers on the right-hand bed. Yukiko folded her arms and glared at him. "Okay, what the _hell_ is up with you? You've been flipping back and forth from iceman to pervert, and I'm getting whiplash trying to keep up. Explain yourself or we're going to have problems working together."

Seichi sat cross-legged on his bed and slipped a deck of cards from his coat pocket. He shuffled them several times, snapping the cards against each other in sharp waterfalls of sound, and then fanned them out, face-up, toward Yukiko. When he looked up, his eyes were tired.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I know I bother people, but I can't stop doing that. The iceman and the pervert -- interesting names, by the way -- are my tools. I work covert ops. I can't ever slip out of character. I have to _be_ my persona." He sighed and collapsed the deck, leaving the ace of spades on top. "You met the Anbu assassin first. Then you met Tsukene, the cover for this mission." He drew the next card: ace of hearts. "Until now, you haven't met me." Joker.

Yukiko blinked. "Huh?"

"The medic-nin tell me I compartmentalize," Seichi said, shuffling the three cards back into the deck. "Think of it like this: if you ask me about the mission, that calls out the assassin because he deals with missions. If I'm talking about things Tsukene would be interested in, that brings out everything about him, including the excessive flirting. I'm sorry for that, by the way, but it's a good way to make people underestimate him and they remember his attitude instead of physical details that are harder to change."

He shrugged, as cards cascaded in a flashing arc from hand to hand. "You wouldn't normally see much of me -- I have to be Tsukene in public, and I default to the assassin on missions. But if I'm making you that uncomfortable, I'll try to keep the assassin facedown until we're planning the actual op."

Yukiko blinked again, unfolding her arms and leaning back against the wall. "Huh. You know, that can't be healthy."

"So the medic-nin say." Seichi shrugged. "It works for now. If I quit Anbu, I may think about changing, but I have a few years left before I'll fail the psych tests -- I'm not civilian stable, but I'm not a mission liability. And I may well die before it becomes an issue. Anbu prioritizes mission completion over asset safety."

He began dealing an elaborate pattern on his bed, shaped like a clock: four cards for each hour and four more in the center. He turned up the top card in the middle -- three of spades -- and slid it under the three o'clock pile. "This is clock solitaire, by the way," he said, turning up the eight of hearts and moving it to eight o'clock. "I'll teach you, if you don't already know it. Anyway, Yukiko-san, will you be able to deal with the assassin, or should I make the effort to shunt him aside?"

Yukiko pressed the back of her hand against her forehead, missing the cool weight of the metal protector, and tried to think. She could deal with the assassin, and with Tsukene the pervert, but...

She frowned. Huh. That question was a challenge, phrased to make her pick the assassin rather than seem scared or inflexible. Did Seichi not want to be himself? That made him the coward.

Yukiko groaned mentally. Somewhere, somehow, the universe was laughing at her -- _why_ did anyone think she was qualified to handle problem cases? Still. Seichi was a Fuuma. If she didn't try to help him, even if all she could do was deliver a judicious kick in the ass, Ame would never forgive her.

"The assassin can handle all the mission details," she said, pointing at Seichi, "but when we're alone I want to talk to _you_ , not any false faces. For one thing, I'm taking you up on that offer to teach me card games, but there's no way on earth I'm learning from that Tsukene pervert, and I doubt the iceman is interested. Clear?"

Seichi stared blankly at his half-finished game for several seconds, as if he didn't quite understand her answer. Then he flipped over all the facedown cards, neatly and precisely, and swept the deck into a single pile. "I'll try. We'll start with shuffling; take these and demonstrate for me, so I can see what we have to work with." He waved her toward his bed.

Yukiko picked up the cards and smiled.

\---------------

Kakashi saved his breath once they took to the trees. Naga was grateful. She focused on the catch of bark under her hands, the minute scrape and slide as her sandals tapped branches and trunks, and the pleasant burn of chakra flowing smoothly from limb to limb. The sky was blue in flashes through the leaves, and the warm, dusty smell of summer swirled around her.

Naga tuned out the residual ache of Itachi's jutsu and sank into the no-mind of movement. She ceased to exist; there was only the rich, bottomless life of the forest, the warmth of sunlight, and the rush of wind.

When Kakashi stopped in mid-afternoon, she found herself crouched on a branch, two kunai in her left hand and her right hand drawn back for an extension, before she realized that there was no threat.

"Nice reflexes," Kakashi said dryly, "but I don't think lunch needs killing."

"Bastard," Naga grumbled as she swung over to join him on a wide branch that overlooked a tiny, sunlit clearing. The jounin pulled an energy bar from his pack. Naga followed suit, scowling at her mother's choice in flavors. "Why does she always pick the date bars? I like the meat-paste ones better."

"There are fewer preservatives in fruit bars, and we can always hunt if we need protein. It's harder to find date bars in the wild," Kakashi said, his face hidden behind his canteen. When he lowered the canvas-covered bottle, his mask was already back up. Naga flicked her fingers at him, which he ostentatiously failed to notice. "Before they dropped out of communication, the two Uchiha closest to your campsite were in Rain Country and northern Fire Country. Which direction did Itachi come from?"

Naga took a bite of the date-bar and pummeled her memory. "West. He was across the stream from us -- the one that runs along the southern third of the Grass Country border. We'd camped on the east bank in case a border patrol found us and got touchy."

"Sensible of you," Kakashi conceded. "Itachi probably circled through Grass Country specifically to drag border and jurisdiction issues into any pursuit attempt. Therefore, he did have backup plans. That's useful to know, but not very helpful in backtracking his path or guessing his current direction of travel."

"We'll reach the border the day after tomorrow. Bet the Grass-nin are already tracking," Naga said. Kafunnokaze's team ran border patrols, and he was just stupidly noble enough to take an attack on her and Tsukihime as a personal insult. Unless he was ordered to the other side of the country, he'd be tracking that Uchiha bastard and probably dragging his team along with him.

Kakashi shrugged. "They might be, they might not be; you never can tell with foreign shinobi. We don't have a full alliance with Hidden Grass, just a peace treaty and a series of precedents for mutual aid. Precedents are dangerously fragile compared to alliances, and even alliances are questionable. There's a lot of bad blood left from the great wars."

Naga twitched her shoulder; her pack strap pulled on the mesh fabric of her shirt. "Maybe they won't do it officially, but nobody likes a really dangerous missing-nin pulling shit inside their borders. You lose face. Question's whether they'll follow him past the border."

"Ah, my little Naga-chan is growing up into a political analyst!" Kakashi exclaimed, his eye crinkling into that incredibly annoying crescent shape. "I'm so proud of you!"

"Shut up."

"One day you may even become an official ambassador between villages! To think that one of my students could rise so high!" Kakashi patted Naga on the shoulder, and then stared mournfully at her. "You'll remember me in my decrepit old age, won't you, Naga-chan? You'll look after your teacher when his youth deserts him, right?" His voice was sweet as honey, laced with foxglove.

"Jerk." Naga shook his hand off and scowled. Even if Kakashi lived to retirement age, she couldn't picture him helpless. The mental image refused to cohere.

"Young ninja these days have no respect for their elders," Kakashi said, his eye drooping in mock-sorrow. "I suppose I'll have to drill some manners into you." He clapped his hands. "Break's over; burn and bury the trash and get moving. We need to make as much time today as possible. Tomorrow we stick to the ground to let my pack pick up Itachi's scent."

Five minutes later, there was no sign that humans had ever passed through.

\---------------

"Anata, I notice that you're sending the _Crane_ out on the coastal route, but Takeshi mentioned that he'd be staying in Tengai," Tetsuko announced halfway through dinner, as she took a second helping of rice. "You wouldn't keep him here for no reason, but you haven't informed me of any particularly important meetings or deals. Therefore, you're hiding something from me. When I find out what that is, I'll most likely be very angry with you. Please pass the tuna."

Eiji choked on a water chestnut. Tetsuko tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear and smiled serenely.

"I told you so," Ginji said from the doorway. Eiji coughed again and tried to order Ginji to silence with his eyes alone. It was ultimately futile -- once Tetsuko knew a secret existed, she always, inevitably, learned what it was -- but if he could buy a little time, if he could present her a firm alliance with Akatsuki when she came to confront him, she might forgive him faster.

Ginji raised a hand to his face, as if covering a yawn. His fingers brushed his forehead protector and his lips. _I'm shinobi; I keep my employer's secrets_ , that gesture said. Eiji wondered whether he should feel relieved or sad.

"You might have told him not to bother keeping secrets in the first place. You know I always find out," Tetsuko said as Ginji eased into the kitchen and grabbed a bowl of rice from the table. "Take some tuna and vegetables, Ginji; you have to set a good example for Mitsuko. And take off your vest. This is a family dinner and I know you have at least one of your minions on guard duty."

"No guard is perfect--" Ginji began.

Tetsuko's eyes narrowed. "Ginji. Vest. Off."

Ginji obeyed, but retreated to lean against the doorframe where he could watch the entire room. Tetsuko, having won her main point, didn't press him to sit at the table.

"Mommy? Why are you going to be angry at Daddy? Are you going to fight?" Mitsuko asked, fiddling with her chopsticks.

"No, dear," Tetsuko said, reaching across the table to tap her daughter's nose. "You know how your father and I like to play puzzle games? This time I think he's chosen the wrong sort of secret to keep. That's why I'm annoyed. But he and my brother are having such fun that I won't make them tell me the secret right now. I'll find it out for myself."

"Oh," said Mitsuko, with an enlightened air. "That's okay, then. Daddy and I are keeping a secret from you, too, but you'll find out soon, and it's a good secret." A thought visibly struck her, and she wrinkled her nose. "How do you know which secrets are good and which are bad?"

"Good secrets don't hurt people; bad secrets do. The tricky part is when a secret can help and hurt someone at the same time," Eiji said. "If you have a secret like that, Mitsu-chan, come ask me or your mother what to do."

Tetsuko shot Eiji a sharp look. He shrugged, and waved a chopstick over the table. "Change of subject! Ginji tells me there's been a disturbance in Hidden Leaf -- somebody or something killed most of the Uchiha clan -- and we'll most likely have several Cloud-nin traveling through Tengai over the next few weeks, searching for survivors who might be in Sky Country. We're sending most of the security forces out with the ships -- three left on the _Trailing Mist_ today -- but I can't work out itineraries and routes until I know what's in our warehouses and what orders we have. How soon can you pull that information together?"

Tetsuko's forehead wrinkled in thought and she tapped one chopstick on the rim of her rice bowl. "Hmm. I had a rough schedule worked out for clearing the last of the summer goods, but if you're sending all the ships at once... Hmm. Maybe not tomorrow, but definitely by the next morning. Do you want it organized by destination or by type of goods?"

"Either will work. Saving our necks is a bit more important than maximizing profits. On that note, you'll have a personal guard shadowing you for the next month or so."

"Understood. And don't think I don't realize you're trying to distract me, Eiji."

Eiji clasped his hands and raised one eyebrow to exaggerated heights. "Yes, but is it working?"

Tetsuko shook her head, but she was smiling. "Some days I swear you never grew up," she said fondly.

Eiji winked at Mitsuko, and then adopted a deep, portentous tone. "No! You have discovered my final secret! I am undone!" He slumped abjectly in his chair, and then pointed across the table at his wife. "Fiend! You have destroyed me, and now, alas, I must commit honorable seppuku to cleanse the dishonor of being so easily seen through." He pretended to disembowel himself with one of his chopsticks and collapsed over his empty bowl.

Mitsuko giggled and poked at him with a sauce-covered chopstick. "Daddy, you're weird."

"That he is," Tetsuko agreed. "But think how boring life would be if he didn't play silly games."

"He also managed to stab himself in the ribs instead of his abdomen," Ginji said, dryly, as he deposited his bowl and chopsticks in the sink and sat on the counter. "Mitsuko, your father has a number of good qualities, but you should never let him get his hands on a knife. Bad things tend to happen."

"I know! This morning, when we were---" Mitsuko clapped her hands over her mouth, dropping her chopsticks to the floor. "I almost told a secret!"

Eiji flushed, remembering his unfortunate attempts to show Mitsuko how to chop vegetables that morning. Fortunately, the housekeeper had refused his offer of a paid morning off and taken over the lesson, thus ensuring that no signs of experimentation crept into the soup and tipped Tetsuko off to his and Mitsuko's culinary adventures.

Tetsuko sent a speculative look at Eiji as she stood to clear the table. "Do I want to know?"

"No. You don't," Eiji said firmly, crouching to pick up Mitsuko's chopsticks. "This secret won't hurt anyone, and telling it would definitely be a bad idea."

Tetsuko turned to Ginji and raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

"Don't ask me. Eiji's my employer," Ginji said, leaning away from his sister.

"And I'm your twin," Tetsuko said. "Traitor." She poked his chest lightly with a serving spoon. Ginji shrugged, but a ghost-smile flickered over his face for a heartbeat.

Eiji dumped the chopsticks into the sink, kissed Tetsuko's cheek, and then swung Mitsuko into his arms. "I'll let you two thrash out which of Ginji's obligations takes precedence. Meanwhile, Mitsu-chan and I will wash up and get some sleep."

"Tell me the story about Shinju-hime!" Mitsuko said as Eiji limped through the main room toward the stairs. "I want to hear what happened after she met the iron dragon, the onmyouji, and the thunder horse. You said they had lots of adventures and lived happily ever after, but I want to know about the adventures."

"Adventures? You want adventures? Then let me tell you about the time the princess and her three guardians had to hide from an army of evil shinobi. It was near the end of summer, just like now, and they had traveled west from the great mountains until they reached the sea--" Eiji began. Mitsuko beamed up at him, and he felt a rain of needles pierce his heart.

This was what he had to protect. This was what the hidden villages destroyed, whether they meant to or not. This was what he stood to lose if he or anyone in Tengai slipped in the next month.

Kami help them all if he couldn't make everything work out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 12/15/15: You may be pleased to know that the rough draft of ch. 16 is finally done! Now I get to edit that and do some very rapid-fire overhauls of chs. 9-15 so I will be able to post ch. 16 here in a week or so. :D


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Ninth, in which Kurenai and Genma discuss the benefits of learning to cook, Yukiko catches up with an old family friend, Naga meets Kakashi's nin-dogs, and Naruto tries to teach Sasuke how friendship works.

Sasuke woke well before sunrise and spent an endless moment in tense confusion before he remembered that his family was dead and he and Naruto were sneaking along after the kunoichi who was going to kill Itachi.

He washed and dressed, and then leaned over Naruto's bed to punch the moron in the shoulder.

"I didn't do it! Yukiko-neechan, tell them I didn't do it!" Naruto shouted, jumping out of bed and blinking furiously. Then memory seemed to smack him in the back of his head, and he scowled. "That's not how you wake people up, you jerk."

"You overslept," Sasuke said. "Besides, a real ninja would have noticed before I got close enough to touch you."

"Like you'd do any better," Naruto grumbled. "Hey, hey, wait here while I clean up, and then we'll sneak into a wagon. I wonder if we can get breakfast first?"

Sasuke stuck out his foot and tripped the moron. "No. You're supposed to be good at planning. Think about it -- if we eat and drink, we'll have to piss later on. There's no guarantee we'll be able to sneak out during the day and we shouldn't make a mess in somebody else's wagon."

"Oh, yeah, right," Naruto said. He rubbed at his eyes and yawned. "It's too early. I'm gonna hit the baths, then we'll go hide. If anybody sees us, remember your name's Ichiro. Got it?"

"Yes. Put on another bandage, too." Sasuke wasn't sure what the whisker marks on Naruto's cheeks meant, but they were too recognizable to leave uncovered. All the older Leaf-nin seemed to know something about Naruto and those marks, and it would be embarrassing if they got caught for such a stupid reason.

Naruto sneaked back in five minutes later, his hair still dripping wet, and grinned at Sasuke. Sasuke looked out the window at the greying sky and tried to ignore the rustling and thumping behind him. "Are you done yet?" he asked after a minute.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm ready. Come on -- we need to pick a good wagon, with a bunch of cloth or boxes and stuff so we can hide and nobody will check too close."

Naruto led the way downstairs, past the empty dining room and kitchen, and along a covered walkway to a series of large storage sheds and stables. "I checked last night while you were doing target practice on the wall. The Tengai caravan wagons are across the yard on the left," he told Sasuke in a whisper. "There's six wagons. I couldn't look inside 'cause that guard came around and said I had to learn what not to stick my nose into if I wanted to be a shinobi -- which is stupid, 'cause ninja are spies, too -- but Yukiko-neechan says there's usually people trading cloth and food and stuff, so I bet we can find some bags to hide in."

He turned to start across the yard. Sasuke grabbed the idiot's collar and hauled him back. "There are guards," he hissed. "Look first, moron."

"Oh, right," Naruto said sheepishly. He stuck his head out from the shadowy corner of the walkway and looked ostentatiously in all directions, then up at the roofs, and then down at the ground. Sasuke made his own examination, not trusting Naruto to do it right. The shinobi with the bandana was nowhere in sight. Neither were any other ninja who might be helping Naruto's sister on her mission. Of course, that didn't mean much if they were shinobi skilled enough to kill Ita-- to kill _that man_.

If he weren't so slow, he might have awakened his Sharingan last year, like his brother had done. Then he would've been able to see anyone who might be hiding.

He had to get stronger.

"I don't see anyone. Let's go!" Naruto grabbed Sasuke's hand and tugged him into the yard. Sasuke held his breath until they ducked into the shelter and slipped behind the wagons.

The first wagon was filled with boxes, each carefully strapped to the floor or to each other, so they wouldn't slide or rattle. "Too organized. Somebody's gonna check this one," Naruto said, and moved on. The second wagon was less tidy, and seemed more communal: a stack of carved wooden clocks nestled against a pile of patterned rugs, which leaned on several sacks of dried plants. "Perfect," Naruto said. "Untie a rug or a bag and let's hide in the corner, behind those big rolls of cotton."

Sasuke obeyed, but only because it was common sense.

Five minutes later they huddled in the corner, hidden by a pile of bags and three bolts of cloth leaning up against the wagon's walls. Sasuke breathed in the pungent, musty smell of herbs that seeped from the bags, and stifled a sneeze.

He was just starting to relax and drift off to sleep -- it was easy enough to tune out Naruto's restless shifting -- when voices and footsteps approached the wagon.

"--you here, Genma?" a woman asked. "We're not expecting any trouble with the caravans -- you're overkill as a station guard."

"Yeah," the guard agreed. "But Raidou and I had a hell of a mission two weeks ago, and I'm killing time while the medic-nin patch him together. I wanted something I don't have to think about." Wood creaked, and something rattled inside a box. "Akibana's wagon looks clear."

Sasuke froze. Naruto grabbed his hand and squeezed.

Their wagon's back wall creaked as Genma lowered it into the ramp position. "Seichi-san already checked the wagons this morning," the woman said. "I doubt anything's changed in the past hour, and we're traveling away from Konoha in any case."

"Point," Genma said. He didn't climb into the wagon. "But I got word that your mission's high priority, Kurenai, and this not thinking business is more boring than I remembered."

"My mission is classified, as you well know. Stop fishing for details," the woman said. Sasuke scowled; he'd hoped to learn more about what Ita-- what _that man_ was up to. "Anyway, Raidou is strong," Kurenai continued. "If he isn't dead or crippled, two weeks should be more than enough to get him in shape for C-class missions."

Genma's senbon clicked as he shifted it between his teeth. "C-class is for genin or lone operatives, not established chuunin teams. Besides, I need at least B-class to pay my rent."

"If you learned to cook, you wouldn't waste all your money on take-out," Kurenai said, with no sympathy. "You're twenty-five years old, Genma. Learn something besides fighting."

Genma laughed. "I'll learn to cook when you make jounin."

"I'll buy you a recipe book, then, since I have every intention of being promoted within the year." Someone raised the wagon's back wall and latched it shut. "Come on. Let's get breakfast."  
Footsteps moved away, and the building's door clicked shut.

Naruto let out his breath in a long gasp. "That was close! I didn't think they'd check the wagons -- hey, hey, are we lucky or what?"

They were _very_ lucky, but Sasuke saw no reason to agree with Naruto, not when the moron had almost gotten them caught. "I'm going to sleep," he said. "Don't bother me."

"Bastard."

"Shut up." Sasuke curled into a more comfortable position, head resting on the corner of a lumpy bag, and thought determinedly of nothing until his consciousness drifted away.

\---------------

Shortly after sunrise, the caravan rattled out of the way station and onto the Hokutou road, heading north. Even at such an early hour, the road was busy -- it was a major trade route, connecting Kame on the southeastern coast with Tengai on the northern bay, and then swinging east to Cloud Country. Farmers hauled produce north and south, their small carts rattling past the traders' heavier wagons, and foot travelers both alone and in groups moved to the sides of the road to let the caravan pass. Now and again riders on horseback swept by on business for the minor lords of Fire Country, raising whirls of dust in their wake.

Yukiko walked alongside one of the mule teams, enjoying the breeze that cut the summer heat. Seichi ambled beside her, his Tsukene persona firmly in place, spinning tales of gambling tournaments he'd entered over the years. She was sure at least half of his stories were lies, but as for the rest, well, assassins did have to pass the time somehow while waiting for the opportune moment and professional gambling wasn't the strangest cover she'd heard of. She wondered if he used ninpou to cheat, or if he wrote off losses as a mission expense.

After an hour or so, she cut him short in the middle of a story about Tsunade-hime, one of Konoha's near-legendary Three, who was apparently so unlucky that a casino had once tried to hire her to stand next to people on winning streaks in hopes that her luck would cancel theirs. "That's fascinating, but we can't spend the whole trip talking about card games," Yukiko said. "Besides, I need to catch up with some acquaintances. Let's start with Yoshitaka-san."

Akibana Yoshitaka was one of Fire Country's main dealers in medical equipment and specialized tonics and herbal ingredients. He spent most of the year on the road from one end of the country to the other. He was also a former friend of Yukiko's parents, and, during his stopovers in Konoha, a drinking companion to her uncle.

He waved as she and Seichi fell back along the caravan toward his wagon. "Yukiko-chan! No, wait, you're much too old for that now. Would you prefer me to use -san, or should I--"

"Just Yukiko will do, Yoshitaka-san," Yukiko said, smiling. "How are you these days? I don't think I've seen you properly for two years now -- that time I ran into you and Uncle Yutaro last winter doesn't really count." It had been... interesting... to see her uncle wavering tipsily through the rain-drenched streets, his arm wrapped around Yoshitaka-san, both men attempting to make their way through an old love song.

Yoshitaka-san laughed. "I wasn't at my best that night, that's for certain. But enough of that. Let me introduce you to my son, Takahiro." He patted the shoulder of the gangly teenager beside him. "This is his first major trip, so if you'd help me keep an eye on him along the way, I'd be in your debt." He slid his eyes toward Seichi in silent question.

"Tsukene Seichi," Yukiko said, pointing at her partner, who stuffed his hands into his coat pockets and smiled engagingly. "He's new to Konoha -- he helped me with some building repairs when Yusuke was busy with schoolwork, so I agreed to take him out with a caravan and show him the ropes. If he suggests a card game, don't listen. He was a professional gambler before he decided to go into a more honest trade."

"This is the return I get for my love, Yuki-chan?" Seichi asked, pressing a hand to his heart. "Cruelty, thy name is woman!"

"He's also an incorrigible flirt," Yukiko said dryly. "I'm not sure if I should be grateful that he seems to like me."

Yoshitaka-san traded a grin with Seichi. "Even wandering men have been known to settle down in time, Yukiko. My wife can give you some advice if you decide to take on this rogue."

Yukiko crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. "Huh. That sounds as if you're implying that you were wild in your youth, Yoshitaka-san. I refuse to believe it. You must have been born responsible and wise -- except around good sake, of course."

"Alas, I must ruin your good image of me! It's true, I was notorious in my youth. Your mother could have told you hair-raising stories, I'm certain. She was particularly fond of the one about the hedgehog and the empty sake bottle... but on reflection, I don't think you need to hear that story, and I'm certain Takahiro doesn't." Yoshitaka-san laughed at his son's disappointment.

"Be that as it may, I'm sure you can give Seichi some useful advice," Yukiko said. "May I leave him with you for a moment?"

Seichi pouted. "Abandoning me, Yuki-chan? And after all I promised you last night!"

"Yes," said Yukiko. "Sit. Stay. I'll be back soon." She walked off toward Kurenai, ignoring Seichi and Yoshitaka-san's laughter.

Kurenai was currently at the front of the caravan, walking beside the siblings from Grass Country. Yukiko nodded politely to them and pulled Kurenai aside with a murmured excuse about security questions. Kurenai raised a distraction genjutsu as they drifted to the side of the road. "Is anything wrong?"

Yukiko shrugged. "Define 'wrong.' Seichi may drive me crazy by the end of the mission, but he's Anbu. Crazy goes with the territory. I wanted to ask how you plan to deal with attacks, on the off chance that we run into real danger." Her fingers twitched, and she stuffed her hands into her pockets so she wouldn't reach for her absent forehead-protector. "Seichi and I can't break cover, but I don't want unnecessary deaths. Can you cover us if we have to jump in?"

Saying 'we' was a big assumption. Seichi very likely could and would stand by and watch the caravan die rather than break mission cover. But even if she planned for the worst, she could hope for something better.

Kurenai frowned, running a glance back along the caravan. "The obvious cover is to separate from the caravan so there aren't any witnesses. Second is to knock out any witnesses and blame that on the targets. Third is to kill the witnesses, but I assume you'd prefer not to." Yukiko nodded fervently. "Beyond that, I suppose either you or I could fiddle their memories -- actually, couldn't you make the civilians look the other way while Seichi-san works?"

Yukiko shrugged again. "If I had time to set it up beforehand, sure. Keeping people from noticing something is easy. But you can't count on having that time, and making people _stop_ seeing something once they've already realized it's there... that's a lot harder. Besides, I'm not great at mid-range illusions unless I'm working one-on-one. My specialties are the really subtle stuff and physical-effect genjutsu."

Kurenai looked intrigued. "We should practice together sometime. I've never learned any physical-effect genjutsu, but I have a lot of experience with mid-range techniques, especially asserting an illusion in the face of disbelief."

"You're a combat shinobi; I'm a spy. Different emphasis," Yukiko said.

"True, but there's no reason not to be well-rounded. I want to make jounin, you see, so I'm always interested in learning new jutsu."

Jounin, huh? "You're obviously already qualified for solo combat missions," Yukiko said slowly, "which is impressive for a genjutsu specialist, so I don't think you have anything to worry about. Physical-effect genjutsu isn't that useful, really -- straight ninjutsu's more effective, four times out of five -- but if you're interested, I can show you some techniques."

She caught the unspoken question in Kurenai's face and added, "I'm hopeless at ninjutsu, or I'd never have bothered with physical-effect genjutsu. The backlash is vicious. The only benefit is that, because they work through the mind rather than the body, people often don't block them effectively. You just have to cope with the rebound or have a partner ready to take advantage."

Kurenai considered that for a moment. "It sounds like a useful element of surprise, but I see why it's not a standard combat style. Thank you for telling me."

"No problem," Yukiko said. "Anyway, I should get back to Seichi before Yoshitaka-san starts telling him embarrassing stories about my childhood. His cover persona's bad enough _now_ \-- I'd hate to see him with blackmail material."

"But blackmail is such fun..." Kurenai said with an innocent smile.

Yukiko stared flatly at her, and then headed back toward Yoshitaka-san's wagon. For the second time that morning, laughter trailed after her.

\---------------

Kakashi didn't bother setting a formal watch overnight. Both he and Naga had well-honed proximity senses and they had no one else to guard, so, he said, they might as well sleep in the trees and save themselves the annoyance of staring at each other for half the night. Naga agreed.

She still ached from Itachi's freaky genjutsu -- not enough to slow her reflexes, but enough to be a persistent annoyance, and there was always the off chance that she might mistake a real injury for a phantom twinge and miss something important. The ache was psychosomatic -- _had_ to be -- but even if it was all in her head, a good night's sleep would probably go a long way to convincing her subconscious that she was getting better.

She woke with a dog in her face.

Naga blinked. The dog mirrored her. Then it licked her nose.

She body-swapped herself two trees over out of reflexive surprise. "What the _fuck?_ "

Behind her, Kakashi was laughing his head off. "I see you met Hibiki. Hibiki, the kunoichi you just startled -- don't do that, by the way; it's bad for your life expectancy -- is Tonoike Naga, my mission partner. Naga, this is Hibiki, one of my nin-dogs. Girls, play nice with each other."

Naga stared at the dog. The dog stared back, meeting her eyes in a calm, un-canine assessment. It looked a little like a shar-pei -- square muzzle and wrinkly skin around its face and neck -- but its hair was long like and wavy a shih-tzu and its body was thin and rangy. Bit of a mutt, Naga concluded. Its collar was a miniature forehead-protector with the spiral leaf symbol of Konoha.

"Hi," Naga said.

"Hi yourself," the dog said in a scratchy voice. "Now get me down from here. I'm not a damn cat and I can't climb trees." She glared at Kakashi, who held up his hands in mock-surrender.

"I'll call in the pack while you two get acquainted," Kakashi said, flipping a small scroll along the back of his knuckles. "I'm sure you'll be great friends."

Naga and the dog exchanged a measuring glance before Naga leaped back to her original branch. "You're lucky," Hibiki said as Naga scooped her up and walked down the tree-trunk. "You're only his partner on this mission. I'm stuck with the idiot for life, since my old pack leader was stupid enough to sign a contract with him."

"He's not an idiot," Naga said, feeling strangely defensive of her fellow human. "Idiots don't make jounin. He just thinks it's funny to act stupid."

"It's damn annoying either way," Hibiki said with an air of finality. "Now set me down before you put my legs to sleep with your incompetence."

Naga dropped the dog. Hibiki stretched her long legs in midair and landed gracefully, then wagged her tail as if to say, 'I know what you were trying, and you'd have to bribe me to care less than I already do.' She trotted off toward Kakashi and a small pack of mixed-breed dogs, their numbers increasing in regular puffs of smoke.

Kakashi stopped with somewhere between ten and thirty dogs -- they moved around, under, and over each other, making their number hard to determine -- and knelt to hold a whispered conference with a stubby dog in a sort of cape, who seemed to be the pack leader. Naga couldn't figure why some of the larger dogs hadn't challenged for the position, but maybe the shrimp had hidden qualities. Or maybe nobody wanted the top job, since it meant spending the most time with Kakashi? Hard to say.

"Here's a scrap of Uchiha Itachi's Anbu uniform -- he burned it, but there's a remnant of his scent," Kakashi said as the stubby dog melted back into the pack. "Everybody get a sniff, then move out, northwest. Report any traces to Pakkun and to me."

The dogs crowded around, sniffing at the charred fabric in Kakashi's hand. Then they faded into the forest, their grey and brown bodies vanishing against the fallen leaves and occasional underbrush. The stubby dog gave Kakashi a long, speaking look. "You'd better switch us out around noon or I'll claim breach of contract," he said, before following his pack.

Kakashi vanished the fabric and stretched, turning to face Naga. "He doesn't mean it, of course -- Pakkun just likes to make sure I don't take him lightly. The old pack leader relied on nips at the ankles and ruined books. Pakkun prefers guilt trips and nagging. It would get old if I bothered to listen." He shrugged. "So, you've met the pack. Thoughts?"

Naga grinned as she shouldered her pack. "You and Pakkun deserve each other. I'll stick with ravens."

She leapt back into the trees, heading northwest toward Grass Country.

\---------------

Sasuke slept through the morning, swayed by the steady rumble and creak of the wagon. A few times he drifted awake to find Naruto's foot or elbow shoved into his back, but he didn't care enough to wake up and push the idiot away.

Sometime in the afternoon -- it was impossible to be sure of the time without a watch or a view of the sky -- he woke for good. Naruto was still sleeping, curled into a ball of black and orange cloth and hugging a sack of plants like a safety blanket. He looked like a civilian, like somebody's little brother who needed to be protected. He didn't look anything like a ninja.

Sasuke sat up behind their screen of boxes and cloth, and nudged Naruto with his foot. "Wake up, moron," he whispered as loud as he dared.

Naruto slapped ineffectually at Sasuke's toes. "Go 'way."

"No. Wake up." Sasuke prodded the moron harder, digging his toes into Naruto's stomach.

Naruto slivered his eyes open and glared. Then he spoiled the effect with a jaw-cracking yawn. "Bastard," he whispered amiably. "Hey, hey, what time is it?"

Sasuke shrugged.

Naruto scowled. "If you're not gonna talk, why'd you wake me up? I was having a great dream! Iruka-sensei took me and Shinnin and Sakura-chan and Yukiko-neechan out to Ichiraku, and we all got to try ramen for free 'cause it was a ramen festival or something, and I was just starting a bowl of cheese ramen when you kicked me, and I wanted to know what it tasted like! I wish there was a kami of ramen so we could have a festival like that for real." He sat up and stretched his arms over his head, then twisted so his spine popped and crackled. "That's better. So, jerk, what do you wanna do until we stop for the night?"

Sasuke stared at Naruto, wondering why he'd bothered to wake the idiot. He might have been bored, but he wouldn't have had to listen to crazy babbling about ramen, of all things.

Naruto eyed him suspiciously. "You're not plotting anything, are you? 'Cause if you are, I'll yell, and everyone will find us. I'll just get in trouble, but you'll never know what happens to your stupid brother."

"Itachi isn't stupid!" Sasuke snapped reflexively, and then clenched his jaw so his teeth ached.

He shouldn't defend _that man_. He _couldn't_. He couldn't still care about Itachi. His brother was evil, a liar. He'd always been a liar, right? He'd never really cared, right? He couldn't have cared, not if he'd killed everyone! All that time Sasuke had looked up to him, _that man_ had just been laughing and pretending he thought Sasuke mattered, but it was all a lie. He'd only left Sasuke alive because Sasuke was worthless, wasn't strong enough to matter.

Well, he'd show Itachi. He wasn't going to be worthless. He'd get strong, stronger than anyone, and when he killed _that man_ , Itachi would regret not finishing the job when he'd had the chance.

"--listening to me? Hey, bastard!"

Sasuke looked up and caught Naruto's narrowed eyes. "What?"

Naruto relaxed, leaning against the wagon's frame. "You're weird, you know that? Of course your brother's stupid. Family's the best thing in the world, and anyone who throws that away is the stupidest person ever. He's beyond stupid -- he's crazy!"

"You're crazy, moron," Sasuke said, but it didn't sound convincing to his own ears, and Naruto just grinned at him. Sasuke crossed his arms and sighed. "So make a plan to keep us from dying of boredom."

Naruto's grin widened. "That's easy. We'll pretend we're friends, and we'll talk about stuff. I'll start, since you're a jerk and probably don't know about having friends." He leaned forward, waving his hands. "So, so, last week me and Shinnin went over to Sakura-chan's house after school -- we don't go to Shinnin's house 'cause her dad's a worse bastard than you, and he always yells and makes Sakura-chan cry -- and we started practicing Bunshin for the test. I _suck_ at Bunshin, even though Yukiko-neechan tries to help me, so I ended up failing anyway."

Naruto pouted for a moment, and then brightened again. "But that day, Sakura-chan said that maybe we could cheat. She could transform so she looked like me, and we could pretend she was my clone and maybe Iruka-sensei wouldn't notice--"

Sasuke closed his eyes and tried to tune out Naruto's whispering without actually plugging his ears and showing how much it bothered him. If he couldn't ignore the idiot, he might go insane before they got out of the wagon, but he'd be boiled alive before he let Naruto know he was getting to him.

If this was friendship, maybe his brother had the right idea after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor edits as of 2/25/07, to correct Kurenai's age. Thanks to Kei for pointing out my mistake!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Tenth, in which Naruto and Sasuke are discovered (you didn't seriously think they'd stay hidden all the way to Tengai, right?), Naga and Kakashi continue to do nothing in particular, and a Cloud-nin arrives in Tengai to put Eiji in a moral bind.

The Hokutou road had way stations every five to ten miles, catering to travelers and marking side roads to local villages. Yukiko liked to take advantage of their solid roofs and hot meals and often detoured through the countryside to gauge a region's civilian economy, but the merchants in this caravan had more specialized businesses and cargos. They pushed on past several stations and camped at the side of the road, circling the wagons at sunset to form a rough enclosure.

"It's rough on the bones," Yoshitaka-san told Seichi as they unhitched the mules, "but we'll reach Nagarehiya sooner -- midmorning the day after tomorrow, if we're lucky. And the less time we're on the road, the more time we have to do business in the city."

"I miss the inns," Seichi said, leaning against Yoshitaka-san's wagon and stretching his feet toward their campfire. "I used to stop everywhere that had food and beds, so I could play every night without wearing out my welcome anywhere." He shuffled as he spoke; cards cascaded from hand to hand without any apparent conscious direction, their faces stained orange-gold by the firelight.

Yoshitaka watched the display for a moment, and then clapped his hands. "We're all friends here, Seichi-san, and I don't play for money -- my wife would disembowel me -- so I'd be happy to help you warm up your old skills after dinner."

The cards slapped down into Seichi's left hand, jack of hearts topmost. "Yuki-chan? Would you disembowel me if I relapsed a little? One game of poker never hurt anyone..."

Yukiko shrugged. "I'm willing to learn. But first, dinner." She pulled out a collapsible pot and tripod, a canteen, and three packages of noodles. "It's nothing special, but it'll hold us for the night." She was glad Naruto wasn't around. If the kid saw her eating instant noodles, she'd never be able to drag him away from Ichiraku ramen stand again.

The water had just started to boil when a commotion broke out across the circle of wagons. The Grass siblings and the pretty woman from Water Country were shouting at each other, while the older Wind woman had pushed her veil back to yell at all three of them. She seemed to be sheltering someone behind her, against the side of a communal wagon.

Kurenai appeared from the darkness beyond the camp, spinning a minor genjutsu to encourage calm and silence. "What's the trouble?"

The four civilians all answered at once, talking over each other, but Yukiko caught the words 'intruders,' 'ruined,' and 'children,' and a horrible suspicion bloomed in her mind. "Yoshitaka-san, please watch the noodles for me," she said, and hurried across the shadowed clearing.

"We're not spies!" a terribly familiar voice shouted from behind the Wind woman. "And we didn't mean to smash your stupid plants, but if you're gonna be such jerks about it, then I'm not sorry!"

Naruto's face -- sporting a wide bandage over his left cheek -- glared out from under the woman's shoulder. The Uchiha boy, Sasuke, stood sullenly beside him.

Yukiko wanted to beat her head against a tree. She took a deep breath instead. Then she spun a quick genjutsu to alter Naruto's hair color and hide the demon marks on his face, and stepped forward. "Please excuse me," she said, bowing to the Grass siblings and the Water woman. "This is my younger brother, Yujiro, and his friend Sa-- Sakama. Yu-kun likes to play jokes on me, and he seems to have thought it would be funny to sneak along on my trip. I'm very sorry for this incident, and if you get your goods assessed in Nagarehiya, I'll pay for whatever damage the boys caused above and beyond the typical hazards of overland transport."

Naruto opened his mouth. Sasuke slapped a hand over it before the kid could say anything. Yukiko made a note to thank him later. _After_ she killed both of them.

Kurenai shot her a confused look and the hand-sign for 'compromised mission.' Yukiko shook her head subtly and answered with 'later' and 'go along with me.' Kurenai shrugged. "I'll have to ask how they got around caravan security, Yukiko-san, but for now, please take charge of your brother and his friend so we can make a preliminary investigation of the wagon."

"Sure thing, no problem, thank you!" Yukiko said, darting forward to grab Naruto and Sasuke by their shirt collars. "Come on, you little idiots. We have _lots_ to talk about."

She dragged the boys past Yoshitaka-san's wagon and into the charcoal shadows under the massive trees, crunching twigs and dry leaves under her feet as she went. She didn't stop for several minutes, until they were well away from the caravan and hidden behind a fallen, half-rotted tree trunk. Moonlight streamed through the gap in the forest canopy, washing the world colorless and blurred around the edges; it lent the shadows a menacing edge of uncertainty.

"Stay still," Yukiko commanded, letting go of the boys to cast a sound-distortion over the area, just in case someone had followed.

Then she grabbed Naruto's shoulders and shook him, twice. "What in the name of the kami were you _thinking?_ You could have been _killed_ \-- by traps or monsters in the forest, or if the way station guard had found you and not pulled his strike in time. And I'm on a mission! I can't drop everything to take you back home, but I can't keep you with me either. Then you'd really get killed!"

"I would not!" Naruto protested. "I'm a ninja now, like you!"

"No, you're not," Yukiko said, raking one hand through her hair and wishing for the comfort of her forehead protector. "You're sneaky and you can be smart, but you don't have the reflexes, kid, and you still don't think about consequences. A ninja wouldn't have followed me. A ninja knows when to obey orders and how to be patient. Naruto, do you even understand what you and Sasuke did?"

"It was my idea," Sasuke said, startling Yukiko out of her focus on Naruto. "I-- my brother-- Itachi--" His fists clenched. "If I can't kill him, I want to see him die."

Yukiko blinked. Itachi? True, the ripples of his bloody departure had rescheduled this mission, but why would Sasuke think that Itachi -- an S-class traitor -- had anything to with a routine assassination? "We're not going anywhere near your brother. Last I heard he was in Grass Country, not in the northeast."

Sasuke shifted, drawing back into the shadows. "But you talked about him. You said you'd never done assassination, and you'd be happy when he was dead." Naruto nodded in vigorous agreement.

Huh? Yukiko blinked again. When had she said anything like-- oh, right! Kakashi had dropped by to tell her about his mission with Naga... and Sasuke must have been in the hallway at exactly the wrong moment. Shit. "I was talking to the man assigned to track your brother," she told him. "My mission is completely unrelated. It's still important, though, and you two may have compromised it beyond repair."

Sasuke closed in on himself, crossing his arms over his chest; Naruto looked torn between guilt and defiance. "But we haven't done anything, Yukiko-neechan," he said. "You're not fighting anyone _now_ , and we'll stay out of your way when you find the bad guys, I promise!"

"Kid, shut up while I think." Yukiko tugged on a strand of hair and wondered how to fix this mess. She couldn't send the boys home alone; that was just asking for trouble. Kurenai couldn't take them back to Konoha; that would leave the caravan officially undefended, which would be a breach of contract. She and Seichi couldn't leave the caravan without compromising their mission; the point of traveling slowly with merchants was to build a deep cover in case anyone in Tengai got suspicious and traced them.

But she couldn't keep the boys with her either. For one thing, she didn't think Naruto could manage deep cover if his life depended on it, which it would in Tengai. For another, there was no way on earth she could take the surviving Uchiha heir into danger. Maybe she could ask Yoshitaka-san to watch over them? He planned to leave the caravan in Nagarehiya and head west instead of north.

Yukiko considered that for a moment, then felt like slapping herself. She'd let her emotions overpower her mind -- if this had been a battle, she would have died from sheer stupidity.

The obvious solution was to leave the boys in Nagarehiya with the Leaf-nin on long-term police contracts. A message to Konoha would bring someone to take them home, where Iruka and Sarutobi Hokage-sama could make sure Naruto and Sasuke understood just how stupid -- and how lucky -- they had been.

"I'm not going to strangle you, though you may end up wishing I had," she said to the boys. "You're going to get a small taste of ninja life until we reach a place where I can turn you over to be someone else's headache. I'm on a deep cover mission, so you have to pretend not to be ninja. Don't talk about kunai, jutsu, or the academy. Ever. Kid, you'll be my little brother Yujiro. Sasuke, you'll be his friend Sakama. Make up your own family name if you want one, but _don't_ use Uchiha. That's a dangerous name now."

Sasuke snorted. "Nobody will believe the moron's your brother. He doesn't look anything like you."

Yukiko laughed, too irritated to care about being nice. "Really? Look again, Sakama-kun. His hair is blue-green, just like mine. Anyone who saw Yu-kun's true face before I cast the genjutsu will write the yellow off as a trick of the moon and firelight. For your disguise, I advise a smile. I've only seen three people from your clan who smiled more than they frowned, so I bet that would make you nearly unrecognizable."

"Hey!" Naruto said. "Don't pick on Sasu-- on Sakama! He's a jerk, but that's not his fault. Anyway, it was my idea to follow you, not his. Be mad at me, not him."

Sasuke stared blankly at Naruto, as if he thought Naruto might be an illusion spun out of moonlight: a fever dream instead of flesh and bone. Yukiko almost sympathized. Some days, the kid's mind just didn't seem to work on the same path everyone else's did.

"Idiot," Sasuke said finally.

"You're both idiots," Yukiko said before Naruto could respond. "It doesn't matter which one of you came up with this idea; you both went along with it, so you're both at fault. Now come with me so I can introduce you and make excuses for whatever you damaged in that wagon."

She lifted the sound-distortion and headed back toward the caravan. Naruto and Sasuke trailed after her, bickering.

Yukiko felt a headache settling in for a long visit.

\---------------

The pack found nothing on the first day. "That's life," Kakashi said with a shrug, and sent them away in puffs of smoke. "We'll reach your campsite around noon tomorrow. If we don't pick up his back trail, that's just how it goes."

"How can you be so calm?" Naga asked, shifting on a branch in search of a more secure and comfortable position. "He's a fucking traitor, he has creepy unknown jutsu, he was Anbu, and he's insane. Can't just say 'Oh well, too bad' if we don't find him."

"Actually, we can. Where else do you think S-class missing-nin come from?" Kakashi leapt into Naga's tree, two branches further up, and tucked his pack against the trunk. Naga scowled. She preferred him farther away, but the giant trees were growing scarce as they neared the forest's edge, so it was either share this one or separate. When hunting someone as dangerous as Uchiha Itachi, separation was stupid.

Naga slept deep and hard, refusing to think about Tsukihime in the hospital, or all the ways her mission might go wrong. She woke -- again -- with a dog in her face. This time, she just sighed.

"Your master's a bastard," Naga told Hibiki as she carried the dog down the tree.

"You don't need to tell _me_ ," Hibiki said. "Trust me, we're all very damn aware of that. Now let me get to work." She hit the ground running, and the pack fanned out into the underbrush.

Kakashi drifted over to Naga as she shouldered her pack. "It's not impossible for Itachi to still be in this area. Aerial surveillance might be useful."

Naga shot him a sour look, but she nicked her thumb with a kunai and clapped her hands three times, spreading blood over the contract scars on her palms. She didn't need the actual scroll to summon small ravens anymore. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Chakra rushed through her, twisting into the otherwhere of the summon beasts, sending a guideline for them to follow back to her. She hoped she got Akaruime -- she worked best with him, since he'd grown up knowing her -- but she still had trouble aiming her call at specific birds.

Three ravens popped into the air in a waft of smoke and feathers. "Hi!" croaked Akaruime, folding his wings and landing on her shoulder. "What's up?"

"Surveillance," Naga said. "We're tracking a missing-nin named Uchiha Itachi -- male, my height, longish black hair, lines on his face." She traced her fingers down her cheeks to demonstrate. "Watch for him and for Grass-nin. Report anyone you find. Don't get killed."

"On it!" Akaruime said. The other ravens croaked their agreement, and all three hurled themselves into the air in a rush of wings.

"Happy?" Naga asked Kakashi.

"Writhing in ecstasy, Naga-chan!" he answered, and sprinted after his dogs before the phrasing registered. Naga ground her teeth, then blew her frustration out on a long hiss. She eyed the trees, wrote them off as too spindly for a reliable pathway, and charged after Kakashi, leaping light-footed over tangles of underbrush and vines.

By noon, they still had no sign of Itachi's trail, and they were closing in on the Grass Country border; trees fought for dominance against bushes, wildflowers, and sweeps of tassel grass. Lunch was nothing but a quick stop for ration bars and for Kakashi to swap out his dogs for fresh trackers. Naga fed crumbs to her ravens and watched Kakashi for signs of exhaustion. Multiple summons weren't as easy as he made them look.

"I know my reserves," Kakashi said, catching her surveillance despite her attempt to stay on his blind side. "I'll sleep hard tonight, but I'm not as decrepit as you think I am. I'm more than capable of fighting anyone up to Itachi's level, and it's your job to make sure we don't run into him by accident." He smiled, that mocking curve of his eye and the subtle shift of his lower face underneath his mask.

"Whatever," Naga said, tossing her hand to launch Akaruime back into the air. "Let's go."

The sun hovered two hand-widths above the horizon when they reached the border, marked by a shallow stream. Kakashi whistled, shrill and piercing, and his hands flashed through a quick jutsu to call in his pack. Naga sent her own call to Akaruime, leaving the other two ravens on wide patrol.

"Any luck?" Kakashi asked Pakkun as the dogs loped down to the water and drank. The stubby dog waved a forepaw dismissively and trotted off to join his fellows. Kakashi sighed and flopped bonelessly to the ground. "So much for that -- Itachi must have swung deep through Grass Country, starting from further south or north. We'll find your campsite tomorrow and start again from there."

"Um," Naga said, watching Akaruime swoop in from upstream, a black glove clutched in his feet. "Actually, let's go there now. Grass-nin are waiting." She caught the glove as the raven dropped it -- thin leather, last joint of the fingers cut off for delicate work, barrier seals stitched into the backs and the palms. Yeah, this belonged to Kafunnokaze. He had spares, but he'd want this one back.

Kakashi endeavored to look astonished. "You want us to explain our internal problems to a foreign village? How rash -- I'm shocked!"

"Stop being a jerk," Naga snapped, stuffing the glove into her vest pocket and letting Akaruime perch on her shoulder. "If they're hunting, they're willing to help. That saves diplomatic crap. Besides, they know the ground." Kafunnokaze's team had spent all spring and summer on border patrol. They had the best chance of guessing Itachi's path, and she bet they were furious at the bastard for evading their sweeps.

"Valid points," Kakashi conceded. "All right, let's go see your boyfriend."

\---------------

Tetsuko, running ahead of schedule as usual, handed Eiji a sheaf of cargo lists and voyage itineraries when he dropped by her office for lunch. One hour later, Eiji was down in Rika's office, giving instructions to his captains while Rika supervised the loading of their ships. "Remember the cover story: your security guards are lone shinobi hired only for your current voyages. Don't give customs inspectors or affiliated shinobi any reason to think otherwise. You can let profit margins slip a bit until the situation in Tengai returns to normal. I won't dock your wages for these voyages. Beyond that, as always, I leave matters to the weather and your own judgment. Questions?"

The captains stirred, but before anyone could speak, a hatchet-faced man -- one of Eiji's new personal guards -- sliced through the gathering and knelt at his feet.

The captains shifted uneasily. Missing-nin were the monsters in children's bedtime stories, and Eiji had sharpened their distrust of all shinobi by pointing out the inevitable results of the hidden village system. They understood that shinobi who repudiated their villages were no longer necessarily the enemy, but maintaining peace between civilians and shinobi was touchy. Eiji hoped to blend both groups in the future, but for the moment he and Ginji had settled on separation as a more practical policy. For his captains to see him dealing openly with a shinobi, right in their midst...

Eiji clasped his hands and counted to ten before letting himself speak. "Yes, Kamisori-san?"

The guard raised his head and stood, his movements fluid despite his stocky build. "Eiji-dono, Ginji-san requests your presence at your office. An emissary from Hidden Cloud wishes to speak with you."

Eiji's hands shifted, the thumbnail of his right hand driving into his left palm where no one could see. "I see. Thank you for the message." He pushed back Rika's chair and stood, laying his hands flat against her desk. "I apologize for cutting this meeting short, but something important to the whole town has come up. If your questions or concerns are pressing, please tell Takeshi-san or Rika-san today and consider their responses final."

Takeshi shrugged as the other captains turned toward him. "Sure. Okay, you lot. Who'll catch the evening tide and who needs to wait for morning?" As the captains began talking over and around each other, Eiji followed his guard out of the office and away from the docks.

"How long ago did the Cloud-nin arrive?" Eiji asked as they walked through the narrow, twisting streets of his town. His left knee barely twinged despite the brisk pace; the sky would likely stay clear for the next day or so.

"The Cloud-nin evaded the outer sentries, but we doubt he was in town before noon. Ginji-san spotted him at half past, buying a skewer of fried shrimp and trying to persuade the yatai owner to gossip about your organization. He'd hidden his allegiance, but Ginji-san read the skill in his movements and recognized his face." Kamisori touched his own forehead protector, where a deep line gouged through the symbol of Hidden Stone, and shrugged. "Once he realized his cover was broken, he declared himself and requested a meeting."

"I see. Thank you, Kamisori-san."

Eiji's mind raced in circles for the rest of the walk up the hill from the harbor district. Hidden Cloud shouldn't have grounds for suspicion yet. Why would a spy investigate him and Ginji? If this shinobi had no grounds for suspicion, perhaps they could avoid giving him any. But what would seem suspicious to a man steeped in paranoia? Could something have tripped his superiors' attention already, back in Hidden Cloud? But Ginji had been thorough about building a consistent support of truth around the vital lies in his reports, so Hidden Cloud _shouldn't_ have grounds for suspicion yet...

The front room was unnaturally hushed, all his clerks straining their ears for noise from the second floor offices. The two traders in the far corner seemed equally curious; they stared blatantly as Eiji walked toward the stairs. He forced himself to walk steadily, smoothing out his limp, giving them nothing to construe as a weakness.

Eiji stopped outside his office, rolled down his sleeves, and checked that his collar was buttoned. He looked back down the corridor toward Tetsuko's office -- her door was shut, thank the kami -- and prayed, very quickly, that she and Mitsuko would have the sense and luck to stay out of this mess.

He opened his door.

The Cloud-nin, a pale man with short black hair, a sleeveless black shirt, and heavy civilian-style boots, sat perched on a corner of Eiji's desk, facing sideways to watch the door and window at the same time. Behind him, Ginji leaned against the window frame, playing cat's cradle with a ribbon of crackling electricity. Ginji glanced up as Eiji walked through the door, and the dead blankness in his face and eyes confirmed all the warnings that an open, deliberate use of his elemental chakra suggested. The envoy either knew or suspected something major; there was little chance of a peaceful resolution.

Eiji clasped his hands behind his back, fingers locked together in a death-grip, and nodded his head in a cursory imitation of a bow. "Welcome to Tengai," he said. "I hope you haven't been waiting long."

"That depends on how you define 'long,'" the Cloud-nin said. His voice was deep and raspy, as though he'd screamed his throat raw at some point in the past. "I won't delay further. Amane Eiji, Hidden Cloud condones a certain amount of missing-nin activity in Tengai, of which I'm sure you're aware. Recent civilian gossip indicates significant increases in that activity. Amane Ginji's reports, however, make light of this. I'm here to investigate the discrepancy."

"Ah," Eiji said. He moved toward his desk, allowing his guard to slip into the room behind him and shut the door. "That's easily explained. I've started using missing-nin as security forces on my ships. I find that they cause little trouble at sea, and they're both cheaper and more convenient to hire than Cloud-nin. As you said, Tengai is a center of unofficial activity, so missing-nin are always available on short notice, whereas hiring Cloud-nin requires a several day delay for messages to travel from here into Thunder Country. Because I only hire on temporary contracts, the missing-nin don't remain in Tengai to disrupt the area and Ginji-san finds little additional trouble to deal with or report."

He smiled at the Cloud-nin, falsely sincere, and spread his hands in a gesture of innocence.

The Cloud-nin remained neutral. "I'll make my own investigations to confirm your assessment of the situation. If I find anyone marked for death in the bingo books, I'll have to kill them regardless of their employment status. Please keep your dogs from interfering. The consequences would be unfortunate." His eyes skipped over Kamisori as if the missing-nin were unworthy of consideration, nothing but a crippled pet or a nondescript piece of furniture.

"Thank you for your warning, and I'll do my best to facilitate your mission," Eiji said, still smiling. "Now, if you have no other messages, I have a business to run." He pulled his chair out from his desk.

"That's all for today. I'll speak with Amane Ginji tomorrow. Please release him temporarily from his contract as your security chief, to avoid conflicts of interest." The Cloud-nin nodded in an equally insincere imitation of respect and slipped out the window.

Kamisori looked from Eiji to Ginji in search of orders. "Follow," Ginji said, his voice flat and cold. "Tell the others to increase surveillance distance. Never get within a hundred meters and never try to hide from him." Kamisori sketched a hasty bow and left, closing the window behind him.

After a moment, Eiji collapsed into his chair. "Shit."

"Exactly," Ginji agreed, weaving lightning between his hands. "Hideo isn't stupid. He'll notice the fleet leaving. Once he has that line, it's only a matter of time before he reels us in. We're all guilty by Cloud's laws. What do you want me to do?"

Eiji stared at his hands. They were still callused from years spent learning the merchant shipping business from the bottom up, and ragged around the fingertips where he'd bitten his nails to the quick as a boy, waiting through endless weeks and months to hear if Ginji would survive his missions and his advanced training. They were rough hands, but they were clean. He had never used a weapon.

"Eiji." Ginji's voice was soft. His hands, no longer wreathed in sparks, were open and gentle as he reached across the space between them. Burn scars streaked his fingers, the only visible record of all the death he had caused.

Eiji clenched his fists, pulling away.

"Kill him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I will post a chapter a day until I catch up to myself, which means ch. 16 should go up Tuesday or Wednesday, depending.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Eleventh, in which Naga and Kakashi actually do plot-related stuff instead of just traveling and annoying each other, Yukiko thinks her troubles may be nearly over (how wrong she is...), and Eiji has an excessively melodramatic moral crisis.

There were hundreds of little idiosyncrasies in stream banks -- there always were; no two places were ever exactly identical -- but Naga wasn't great at spotting that sort of thing. Details were-- _had been_ Tsukihime's job. Kakashi's, now. She only knew they hadn't already passed her old campsite because they hadn't run into Kafunnokaze's team yet.

"Nearly there," Kakashi said, pointing.

Naga tracked his finger and realized the circling birds in the distance were her ravens, not the wider-winged vultures that scavenged the plains. Idiot birds were fucking lucky Kafunnokaze kept a sharp eye out for ravens or they'd be back in their own world right now, nursing burns or dying of poisoned air. She'd have to remind them what 'don't get killed' meant when they were hunting shinobi.

She covered the last half mile at a dead run, trusting Kakashi not to get killed in the minute it would take him to catch up.

"Naga!" Kafunnokaze leapt to his feet -- she had a bare second to note his two teammates around their campfire -- and caught her as she tackled him to the ground. "You're alive, you're alive, you're alive--" His voice washed over her as she clung to him, finally letting go and shaking with the fear and guilt she'd bottled inside since the hospital, since she'd seen Tsukihime's slack, nobody's-here face and the twisted mess of her knee, where the medic-nin had had to cut away crucial inches of cooked flesh and heat-shattered bone.

"I fucked up," Naga whispered against Kafunnokaze's neck. "Tsukihime's crippled and it's my fault. I made the fire too hot. If I hadn't been so scared, hadn't pushed the jutsu, they might've saved her knee, but I fucked up. I fucked up, and she'll never do field work again."

"It's okay," he told her. "You were cauterizing, right? Then you saved her life. Tsukihime's smart; she'll understand. You got out and got your information back, so whoever got you won't catch anyone else off guard. And you're alive. The assassin put up an aversion jutsu to keep scavengers and insects away from your camp, so we'd see all the blood and Tsukihime's leg, and I thought-- but you're _alive_." His hand pressed against the small of Naga's back, pulling her tight against him, and he kissed the top of her head.

"Yeah. I'm okay." Naga took a deep, shuddering breath, and loosened her hold on her boyfriend. "And I'm going to find Uchiha Itachi and fucking skin him alive. You in?"

"Of course." Kafunnokaze started to dust her off as they sat up. "But if we're hunting an Uchiha, I think I'll pass on the skinning. I'll just hold him down for you. You have to be careful around Uchiha."

"Whatever." Naga twitched her shoulders, suddenly remembering that Kafunnokaze's teammates were watching them. She pulled his glove from her vest pocket and held it out. "Here -- brought it back for you."

Kafunnokaze pulled a matching glove from one of his own vest pockets -- he didn't wear his coat in summer, not unless he was on solo missions and could use his full arsenal of poisons -- and waved it in her face. "It's yours. I made them for you. Didn't you check the size?" He held both gloves against his hand, showing the mismatch.

Naga flushed and grabbed them, tugging the leather over her own fingers. They fit perfectly. They would also help keep her knuckles from splitting open in fights and protect her skin from her ravens' talons; Kafunnokaze was thoughtful like that. "I was distracted," she said. "Give me some breathing space."

"Nah, I like you right next to me," Kafunnokaze said, wrapping his arm back around her. "Come have dinner and tell us all about this Uchiha Itachi."

"Yeah, listen to Kaze-kun," Suisen chimed in, waving a skewer of roasted meat in friendly offering. "And tell your partner to stop hiding, because we know he's there and it'd be stupid to pretend we don't." Late afternoon sunlight flashed off the mirrors at her wrist and throat as she pointed past Naga's shoulder.

Kakashi stepped out of the tassel grass onto the stream bank, holding his hands up to show he wasn't holding a weapon or preparing a jutsu. "Fair enough. I've seen all of you fight, but I don't think we've had the pleasure of introductions. I'm Hatake Kakashi, jounin. You?"

"Hino Suisen, Makiba Kohaku, and me, Nagoyaka Kafunnokaze, all chuunin," Kafunnokaze said, standing and helping Naga to her feet. "So, tell me. It makes sense to send a Sharingan user to fight a Sharingan user, but why not send an Uchiha? They must be pissed off that one of their clan went bad."

"All the Uchiha in Konoha are dead," Naga said, as Tsukihime flashed before her mind's eye again. "Itachi killed them."

The three Grass-nin were silent for a long moment. Then, " _All_ of them?" Kohaku asked, pulling off his bandana and twisting it in his hands. "How does one man kill a whole clan of Uchiha? It's hard enough to fight just one!"

"He kills them by finding a new level to their bloodline limit and taking advantage of their own arrogance," Kakashi said dryly. "Make no mistake: Uchiha Itachi is dangerous. He could easily have made jounin before this incident. Now he's S-class by any definition." He raked the Grass-nin with a considering stare. "I'm not sure why you're still tracking him. He's almost certainly left your country by now, and I doubt he attacked any of your people. Have the Master and council of Hidden Grass authorized your mission?"

Suisen and Kohaku exchanged a guilty look, and Kafunnokaze squeezed Naga's hand. "Not exactly," Suisen said, "but we're on indefinite border patrol until anything bigger comes up, and we think this qualifies as something bigger. It's a bad precedent to let missing-nin move freely through Grass Country."

"Besides, we couldn't let Kaze hunt the bastard alone," Kohaku added. "What's the point of being a team if you don't support your partners?"

Kakashi beamed at them. "Well said! I don't know how much weight the opinion of a Leaf-nin will hold in your village, but I'll certainly put in a good word for you when you have to explain yourselves to your superiors. Now." He whistled, summoning his dogs out of the long grass; the pack clustered around his feet, eyeing the Grass-nin suspiciously. "I assume you know that Itachi went northeast. We'll follow him in the morning."

"We don't take orders from you," Kafunnokaze said. "Under alliance terms, all joint Grass-Leaf missions are run in tandem by a representative from each village."

_Boys_. Naga kicked him in the ankle -- this wasn't time for posturing. Especially not against Kakashi, who could probably kill them all without much bother. Kafunnokaze was lucky the silver-haired bastard wasn't in the habit of taking insults personally.

"That's true, in theory," Kakashi agreed, slouching down by the fire and grabbing a skewer from the coals. "But you know as well as I do that theory isn't practice. In the field, there's only one commander per unit. Unless you think you'll do a better job than I will--"

"Shut up and do as we're told?" Kohaku finished wryly.

"Exactly. I see we'll get along just fine."

Naga squeezed Kafunnokaze's hand to keep him from protesting.

\---------------

To Yukiko's devout (though unspoken) relief, Naruto and Sasuke's -- or rather, Yujiro and Sakama's -- first day undercover went smoothly. Some of the merchants talked her ear off complaining about bad precedents, and Naruto drove Seichi's cover persona nearly crazy with his unending stream of questions, but those were minor details, easily handled. Yukiko nodded apologetically, murmured polite nothings, and smiled brightly at Seichi every time he asked to be relieved of babysitting duties.

She even saw Sasuke grin, once, when the annoying woman from Water Country squealed like a stuck pig at the sight of a giant centipede galumphing through the trees beside the road. "They have giant squid and fish with teeth like swords down in the islands," Sasuke said when Naruto asked what was so funny. "If she's scared of a centipede, I wonder what she's like on boat trips."

After a moment, Naruto burst into raucous laughter.

On the boys' second day as civilians -- the third day out of Konoha -- the caravan reached Nagarehiya. The city didn't look like much from the south, just another mid-sized town with traditional Fire Country walls, flaring roofs, and narrow skyways, surrounded by fields and outlying clusters of farmhouses.

Inside the walls was another story. Nagarehiya stood at the tip of a long, twisting lake, where several streams rushed down from the hills and poured through a series of spectacular waterfalls. The oldest parts of the city sat on the narrow, sandy lakeshore, but generations of people had built up the hillsides, leveling terraces and building bridges over the deep gorges as they went, until they reached flat land in the upper valley and finally set up the ring wall.

"Wow," Naruto said as they crossed their first swaying suspension bridge. "That's a long way down."

"Yeah, and you're not a ninja, Yu-kun, so be careful," Yukiko said, grabbing the back of his shirt and hauling him more firmly onto the front seat of Yoshitaka-san's wagon. "Falling off a bridge is a stupid way to die."

"Oh, I've heard of more brainless deaths, but I don't think they're suitable for young ears," Seichi said with a cheerful leer in his voice. "Maybe I'll tell you tonight, Yuki-chan... once we're alone in our room."

Naruto folded his arms scowled. "Stop teasing Yukiko-neechan, you jerk! She doesn't like you, and I don't like you either, so just _go away_." But he didn't reach around Yukiko to try hitting Seichi. He'd learned the hard way that Seichi (at least in his cover persona) would cheerfully pin him to the seat in retaliation and then loudly mock his fruitless attempts at escape, much to Sasuke's amusement and Naruto's red-faced embarrassment.

The caravan trundled over another two bridges and down several switchback turns in the road until they reached the guard station housing Leaf-nin on long-term contracts. The merchants waited impatiently for Kurenai to check them all in. Then they split up, unpacking the communal wagons and driving the private ones off to their various destinations.

"You're swinging west after tomorrow, right?" Yukiko asked Yoshitaka-san as she slung her bag of fabric samples over her shoulder.

"Yes, but we'll have plenty of time to see each other tonight," he said. "I'm staying at the Seven Larks, down by the lakeshore. Should I reserve rooms for you?"

Yukiko exchanged a glance with Seichi, who shrugged. "Yes," she decided. "Two rooms should be fine. Thank you, and good luck with your sales." Yoshitaka-san nodded, waited for his son to climb onto the front seat, and flicked the reins; his wagon rumbled off down the street.

Naruto, Sasuke, and Seichi looked around, and then turned to Yukiko with varying degrees of confusion and anticipation on their faces. "Now what?" Sasuke asked.

Yukiko held up her hand, all fingers extended. "Five things. One, we buy Sakama-kun some new shirts. Two, we take Yu-kun to a hairdresser. Three, I hit the local cloth merchants and tailors to see about drumming up business for my cousin. Four, we get a good night's sleep. Five, I leave you kids with the guards tomorrow morning when the caravan moves out, and they escort you home to Konoha." She folded down one finger for each point until she had a closed fist. "I don't want to hear any complaints. You're getting off lightly already, and since I'm not going anywhere near Sakama-kun's brother, not even you two can be boneheaded enough to think following me to Tengai is a good idea."

Naruto looked mutinous and Sasuke closed in on himself darkly, but neither opened their mouths.

"Good. Now, unless they've gone out of business since the spring, there's a good off-the-rack clothing store across the next bridge and a hairdresser's around the corner." Yukiko tossed the sample bag to Seichi, grabbed Naruto's hand, and walked down the street.

"You heard the lady," Seichi said. After a moment she heard his and Sasuke's footsteps following them.

\---------------

Eiji spent the morning distracted by each breath of air through his window or footstep beyond his door. Every noise might be the Cloud-nin coming to denounce and execute him, or Ginji coming to report the man's death. He dreaded both options.

"Kill him," he'd said to Ginji, but he had no idea how or when Ginji might carry out that order. He didn't want to know. He wanted to pretend the incident had never happened, but the idea of turning his back on his responsibility for a human's death felt somehow more repulsive than ordering that death in the first place.

Shortly past noon, he gave up on his pretense of paperwork and went out for lunch. Normally he'd order in and share with Tetsuko, but he needed to get out of the building, needed to shake the feeling of imprisonment. His current guard -- this one a tall, gaunt woman with a gauzy veil, formerly from Hidden Grass -- strode beside him.

"Do you mind sushi, Hanran-san?" Eiji asked her as they turned a corner.

"Why?" the guard asked. She stared at the roofs, then switched her attention down to a swirl of shouting children around a yatai.

"Because I plan on eating sushi, but if you'd prefer something else, I could be persuaded to change my mind," Eiji said. "Don't worry about the children. They're just getting lunch before school starts again."

Hanran hummed noncommittally. "Children can be shinobi and crowds are always dangerous. I won't eat on duty, Eiji-dono. Have your sushi, as long as you let me scout the restaurant first."

'Scout,' she said. In ninja jargon, 'scout' seemed to mean 'intimidate the wait staff, rearrange the tables, glare the other customers out of the room, and terrorize the cooks while checking the kitchen for poison.' Eiji sighed. Ginji swore those were standard precautions for an assassination target, but he felt ridiculous going along with that level of paranoia. He liked to keep in touch with the town, and this security blanket cut him off from his own people.

He might as well have ordered in for all the relaxation he'd get with Hanran hovering in the background.

Eiji led the way down to the water, smiling at everyone he passed and doing his best to ignore Hanran's tense presence at his side. The harbor district was one of the rougher parts of Tengai, home to taverns and flophouses that catered to sailors eager to cram a month of living into a week of shore leave between voyages, but Eiji didn't mind. He'd spent his share of years living out of canvas bags and rented rooms in ports just like this, all over the continent. Besides, the best seafood restaurants were down by the docks, including his favorite sushi place, right around the corner from Rika's office.

Eiji stopped outside the door to let Hanran do a quick check of the interior -- driftwood tables and mismatched chairs filled with people eating and talking; a long counter along the back where the owner stood, occasionally filling a glass with beer or a cup with sake; the swinging screen door to the kitchen where the cook shouted instructions to her assistant; and two pretty waitresses stopping now and then to take orders or refill a teacup. When Hanran nodded, he walked to the counter and beckoned the owner over.

"Sorry about the bother, Sui-san," Eiji said. "Ginji's more paranoid than usual and this" -- he waved at Hanran as she slipped into the kitchen -- "is the result. I'm just here for take-out, whatever today's special is. I'll pay double for the inconvenience."

Sui's mouth twisted sourly. "I keep telling you I don't need charity. People get used to anything after a while. You know I even have idiots come in here and ask when you'll drop by so they can gawk at your pet ninja?" He drew a glass of beer from a barrel under the counter and handed it to Eiji. "Drink this, Eiji-san. You look like you could stand a bit of mellow. Suzume will have your usual ready in a few minutes."

Eiji drank his beer and wished all his problems could dissolve themselves so neatly.

When would Ginji kill the Cloud-nin? And how on land or sea did Ginji expect to talk his way out of the investigation into the man's death? Shinobi might not mourn each other, but they tended to be very interested in anything that could threaten their own power and lives. Neither Eiji nor Ginji could afford that sort of scrutiny.

"The kitchen is clean," Hanran announced as she insinuated herself back into the main room. "You should hire a taster."

Eiji dug his fingernails into the palm of his left hand. "No. It's bad enough that I have to put up with you when I can't afford to hire equal protection for all of Tengai. I'm not going to barricade myself behind a fortress and ignore the risks everyone else is willing to shoulder."

Hanran shook her head, but said nothing. Sui handed him another beer and said, "You're crazy, Eiji-san. I like your dream -- kami be my witness, those ninja need someone to keep them in check -- but you're going to get yourself killed."

"Maybe so. It's still my choice," Eiji said.

It was morally wrong to order a man's death and cower away from the consequences. He almost wished the Cloud-nin would appear in the doorway to accuse him of turning Ginji traitor and conspiring to destroy his old hometown. He wanted some balance to his decision. He didn't want to die -- his fantasy included Hanran forcing the man out into the street, or Ginji appearing at the Cloud-nin's back and dealing swift death -- but to cold-bloodedly order the murder of a human being, to sink to the level of the people he wanted to bring down...

It took Eiji several moments to realize that a brown paper bag had appeared beside his glass and Sui was snapping his fingers to get his attention.

"I don't know what's on your mind, Eiji-san, but I'd rather you didn't play thundercloud here. Take your lunch and go fix whatever problem's heading for our town," Sui said. "Today's on the house."

"Thanks," Eiji said after a pause. "I am sorry for the trouble, Sui-san."

"If you were really sorry, you'd make Ginji stop coming here every day and staring at my waitresses like he thinks they're secret assassins," Sui grumbled, but he smiled as he waved Eiji out the door.

As he walked back up the hill toward his office, Eiji pulled a tuna roll from the bag and did his best to concentrate on food instead of murder. You couldn't build a ship without cutting down trees, as they said. The Cloud-nin was a sacrifice for the greater good. He couldn't afford to tangle himself up in guilt, not until after the message had spread and people had seen evidence of at least one town standing up to a hidden village. Of course, it would be a battle of missing-nin against their former comrades, but the details would vanish as the tale spread. Civilians would take heart and begin to question their own subordination to shinobi and the feudal system they propped up.

Things would change. Things had to change.

He took a few minutes to drop by Mitsuko's nursery school and watch the children. They'd been learning the basics of calligraphy -- sheets of wobbly bone and hook strokes lay drying on a low table -- but the teacher had turned them loose after the lesson. Mitsuko and two other girls were chasing a boy, threatening him with dripping brushes. Their own clothes were already stained with ink, and Mitsuko had black smudges all over her face and arms.

Eiji slipped away before she noticed him.

"You should remove that teacher, Eiji-dono," Hanran said as they climbed the stairs to Eiji's office. "Children need to play, but games should teach useful skills or attitudes. That did neither. Your daughter deserves better; her bloodline shouldn't be wasted."

"My daughter deserves to be a child, not a weapon in training," Eiji snapped. He opened his door and strode through before Hanran could stop him.

Then he froze.

Ginji sat cross-legged on his desk, holding a forehead-protector. A streak of drying blood slashed through Cloud's symbol.

"Is that--?"

"Yes," said Ginji. "Hanran, leave."

As the door clicked shut, Ginji tossed the forehead-protector to Eiji and pulled a thick, unnatural silence over the room with a series of hand seals. "I'll send that back with a courier tomorrow. The official story is that Hideo stumbled onto a man listed in Cloud's bingo books, tried to take him down, and fell to the missing-nin's own allies before I could reach him. I had to use lightning to get them all; there's no evidence left but ashes."

"Who did you murder?" Eiji whispered, running the singed fabric through his fingers. The metal plate stared at him in accusation.

Ginji shrugged. "Half our security forces are wanted by one village or another, even if they're low-priority kills. I waited until Hideo found one; then I killed him while his attention was elsewhere. We lost Hideo's target, but he was scum to start with and nobody ever accused Hideo of bad aim. Let it go, Eiji. We aren't anywhere close to safe. We haven't even reached the eye of the storm. This is no time for second thoughts."

"I know," Eiji said. He twisted the cloth between his hands one last time, then threw it back to Ginji. "Thank you. And I'm sorry. I shouldn't ask so much of you, not after all you've done already."

"Why not? I'm shinobi; this is what I do. Once I did it for Cloud. Now I work for you and Tetsuko. There's no point letting my skills go to waste." Ginji tucked the forehead-protector into a vest pocket and slid off Eiji's desk.

Eiji looked down at his hands, now streaked with ash. A murderer's hands, if only indirectly. A warlord's hands. "Ginji. Are we doing the right thing?"

Ginji stopped halfway through opening the window. "How should I know? You're the philosopher; I just kill people. But yes, I think you're doing the right thing."

"Why?"

"You don't want to know," Ginji said, without turning to face Eiji. His voice had gone cold and flat. Empty. Dead.

"Ginji..."

After nearly a minute of silence, Ginji sighed. "I learned to fight because I wanted to protect you and Tetsuko, not because I wanted to kill at someone else's word. I don't mind what Cloud did to me, not even the experiments. They gave me the ability to fight back effectively. But I don't want Mitsuko to go through that. I don't want her to end up like me."

"What does Mitsu-chan--"

"Don't be stupid," Ginji said, pinning Eiji with a hard stare. "Ever since the bloodline limit riots, the council's been desperate to gain an advantage over the villages that gave the 'freaks' refuge. That's why they try to kidnap or coerce people up to Thunder Country. That's why they force shinobi into arranged marriages. If they can't steal limits, they'll breed new ones. I'm a lightning elementalist; so were at least half the Amane clan back for three generations. The medic-nin suspect Tetsuko and Mitsuko share that affinity. It's not much trouble for me -- I make a donation at the hospital now and then -- but for a girl..." Ginji trailed off and let Eiji's own knowledge of biology and Hidden Cloud fill in the rest.

Eiji leaned one hand on his desk for support. It was one thing to arrange a marriage that would be advantageous for the family. That was only good sense. But a parent had to take the child's wishes into account as well, because if the marriage foundered, the family would eventually fail. Humans were tools of their clans and villages, but not _only_ tools. Humans had minds and hearts and souls as well. Nobody should ever pretend otherwise.

To push people into breeding programs, as if they were dogs or cattle to be shaped at their owners' desires...

"I won't let that happen," Ginji said. "I promise. I'll kill you all before I let Cloud take you alive." He hesitated, as if he wanted to do or say something to soften his words, but nothing seemed to occur to him. "You're doing the right thing," Ginji repeated, finally. Then he vanished out the window.

The unnatural silence lingered behind him.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Twelfth, in which Naga-tachi begin tracking Itachi northeast, Naruto gets the last word in a fight, Sasuke experiments with unhealthy coping methods, Eiji and Ginji do not appear, and Yukiko _really_ needs a vacation.

Her old campsite held no surprises. Naga forced herself to help examine it, but she didn't really see half of what passed before her eyes. The colors and forms wouldn't resolve into anything meaningful.

Psychosomatic, she told herself after the twentieth time she blinked and rubbed her eyes to clear them. It was just stress and her mind flinching away from something too raw and painful to work through without time, rest, and a lot of meditation.

Kakashi, Suisen, Kohaku, and the dogs poked around for maybe half an hour, confirming the outline of the fight and Itachi's outbound trail. It was faint, of course; Anbu knew all the tricks for concealment. But it was there, and even if Itachi could fool either human minds or canine noses, he probably couldn't fool both at the same time -- not for long, and especially not at a remove of several days and who knew how many miles.

"Would he head for a village or stay hidden?" Kafunnokaze asked as they struck camp and prepared to head out. "At patrol speed, Kaiminori is about one day northeast along the border. He might have stopped there for supplies or information. We could save time heading there directly instead of following any switchbacks he tried."

Naga and Kakashi exchanged a glance. Kakashi held up his hands in a shrug; Naga twitched her shoulder. "He's arrogant. I'd stay low, but he may not think he needs to," Naga said.

"If he took off his forehead-protector and didn't use Sharingan, he could easily blend into most populations," Kakashi added. "The village wouldn't have been a significant risk. Was he carrying supplies?"

Naga frowned, trying to remember. "Not that I saw. But you can hide anything in tassel grass. Could've dropped a pack before he broke cover."

"Pakkun--" Kakashi began.

"Way ahead of you," the small dog grumbled, scratching his ear with a hind paw. "We found a small patch of crumpled grass that smells of the target and that fresh breeze crap Anbu soaks all their cloth in. If your Uchiha didn't drop a pack for an hour or two, I'm a monkey's uncle."

"Estimated size of the pack?" Suisen asked briskly as she shouldered her own bag.

"Standard, but it wasn't heavy," said Pakkun, rising from his crouch. "By the time he got here, he'd been moving for what, five days? He needed to resupply."

"Kaiminori it is," Kakashi decided. "Move out; I want us there by mid-afternoon."

"You said Kakashi was a goofy idiot," Kafunnokaze murmured to Naga as they started northeast, coving the ground in an easy loping run. "Does he have a split personality?"

Naga shook her head. "The loopy slacker's a mask, even if he wears it nearly all the time. Underneath he's all tied up in knots he won't let anyone find the loose ends for. I think he likes being a mess, don't ask _me_ why. All jounin are crazy." She twitched, thinking of Maito Gai, or Mitarashi Anko, or Hyuuga Ren, her own jounin-sensei for one year -- _that_ was a relationship she'd been glad to drop, along with the rest of that mismatched team. Even her parents were downright weird; they just hid it better than most high-level ninja. It probably came of working covert ops.

"That's okay. I'm sure insanity will be attractive on you," Kafunnokaze said, and dropped a kiss on her temple before dashing ahead to take point.

Naga fought a silly grin for the next half hour.

\---------------

Genjutsu taught a person how to juggle hundreds of details in the mind's eye. However, there was a difference between details you controlled and details the rest of the world threw at you, especially when the world seemed to take malicious glee in adding new complications. Past a certain number of variables, Yukiko gave up and started dumping her problems onto other people's shoulders.

"Yu-kun, Sakama-kun, if you don't shape up and behave for Yoshitaka-san, I swear I'll talk some of my old ninja friends into _skinning you alive_."

The boys blinked. "You sound really mad, Yukiko-neechan," Naruto said after a moment. "What did we do? We've been good!"

"This is a definition of 'good' that includes two near falls off a bridge because they got into a fight and didn't watch where they were running, one expensive bolt of silk knocked into a mud puddle at the door of a shop -- which I had to buy and will have to haul all the way to Tengai and back or pay to store here for a month -- and earsplitting arguments every hour all afternoon," Yukiko told Yoshitaka-san as she pushed the boys into the Seven Larks inn. "I have to show Seichi a few things, and then I want a couple hours away from my annoying little brother and his equally annoying friend. I apologize preemptively for any trouble they start, and _thank you_ for agreeing to watch them during dinner."

She bowed and dragged Seichi out the door before Naruto had any chance to protest.

"We don't have to report in now," Seichi said as he detached Yukiko's hand from his sleeve and started walking up the hill. "I could do this after dark when the boys are asleep." His gray duster flapped loosely around his legs.

Yukiko shrugged. "I know, but I need a couple hours away from Naru-- from Yu-kun, or I might end up strangling him. Besides, hiring someone to take the boys home gives us a legitimate excuse to visit the guard station, and I'd be failing my responsibility to you as an apprentice trader if I didn't show you around town."

"True," Seichi said, and fell silent.

He seemed to have let the Tsukene persona drop for the moment, since nobody from the caravan was around. Yukiko was grateful. She had nothing against a little flirting, in moderation, but there was a difference between flirtation and being sleazed at, and Tsukene not only crossed that line, he mopped it off the metaphorical floor. Then he made suggestive poses with the mop.

Yukiko sighed. Okay, she was being unfair. From what little she'd seen of him, Seichi seemed like a decent person under the assassin's ice and Tsukene's sleaze, and even the sleaze wasn't as bad as she was making it out to be. She was just tired, stressed, and not coping with things half as well as she normally could. Keeping track of Naruto was tricky in the most favorable circumstances, and a deep cover assassination mission was about as far from favorable as she could get without wandering into a war zone.

And she was trying to stop thinking about Naruto, damn it. Where was a good distraction when she needed one? Couldn't Seichi carry on a normal conversation? Well, she'd just try again.

"What, exactly, makes Amane Eiji so dangerous?" Yukiko asked, and then wanted to bite out her tongue. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She knew better than to ask for that kind of detail, and she definitely knew better than to talk about a mission in public. She really needed to focus.

Seichi wrapped an arm around her shoulders and leaned down with a teasing smile papered thinly over ice-cold eyes. "Amane Eiji has a dream," he whispered into her ear. "He says that the hidden villages and the daimyo keep civilians weak and divided, that we block trade and destroy infrastructure, that we prevent people from guiding their own lives, and that our very existence endangers everyone by creating a constant risk of war and an endless stream of missing-nin who prey on traders and isolated villages. He also says we turn children into monsters by teaching them to kill before they're old enough to understand what that choice means."

Huh. An idealist. People like that were always dangerous, even if they were right on some points. Maybe especially if they were right on some points. That made it easier for them to gain followers.

"I think civilians would be more likely to start wars than we are, and they'd probably kill a lot more people before they reached a truce," Yukiko murmured. "I understand why he has to go -- anyone saying those sorts of things is going to cause nothing but chaos and carnage -- but I feel sorry for him. He wants people to be peaceful and to respect each other. It's a nice dream. And he's right about the kids."

"Death is a fact of life," Seichi said, combing his free hand through Yukiko's hair. "Where's the harm in teaching children how to face that without flinching?"

"There's a difference between facing death and creating death," Yukiko said as she pushed Seichi's arm off her shoulder. "But we can argue later. For now, let's just make our reports and talk to Kurenai."

The guard post was a small, unobtrusive building halfway up the hillside. It looked like nothing more than a flimsy, two-story civilian house, but unless Yukiko missed her guess, it had basement tunnels dug into the rock for secret access to several other parts of town, and the wooden walls were either reinforced with chakra and seals, or were a simple shell over solid stone construction. Those were standard tricks in civilian towns. Half the point of building a fortress was to keep it from being obvious, after all. There was no sense daring people to attack or fostering resentment with showy displays of power, whereas there was a lot of sense in keeping your true strength hidden for when you needed to spring a trap.

A middle-aged genin checked their travel papers and ushered them into the public reception area, which was a plain room with benches along the side walls, a large desk for the clerk on duty, and a bell to summon help from the inner rooms. "Did you have any questions or complaints about the caravan security between Konoha and here?" he asked as he shut the overly solid door.

"No," Seichi said, and dropped his cover.

He didn't change overtly -- it was nothing but a subtle shift of body language and intent -- but one second later the genin's knees shook with the effort of retaining his composure.

"Yukiko-san and I are on a deep cover mission with Kurenai-san," Seichi said flatly. "Kurenai-san has the confirming orders. Bring her here."

The genin sprinted through the inner doorway without stopping to ring the bell, though he retained just enough presence of mind to close and bar the door behind himself.

"That was unnecessary," Yukiko said as Seichi slid behind the desk and began flipping through the guard's papers.

"Mission business," he said, without shifting his attention from the documents.

Oh. Right. Mission business brought out the assassin because the assassin was the persona who took missions, just like the caravan merchants brought out Tsukene because Tsukene was the persona who belonged in the caravan.

"I still say that can't be healthy," Yukiko said, but she tried not to sound judgmental. The middle of a mission wasn't the place to start doing amateur therapy on a temporary partner's head, no matter how much that partner might need to rearrange the contents of his mind before he collapsed. And she had no training and no idea where to start fixing Seichi, just like she had no idea where to start fixing Sasuke.

_Breaking_ Seichi, on the other hand...

But breaking was always easier than building or repairing.

Faint sounds of people moving vibrated through the ceiling and the closed door -- just enough noise to show agitation, but not the chaos or lethal silence that marked flat-out panic. Yukiko closed her eyes and spun out a filament of chakra, trying to count and place everyone in the building. She found two upstairs, sleeping; one directly overhead, still jittery; one near the back of the house, who batted her chakra away with a flavor of annoyance; and Kurenai, walking down the hallway toward the inner door.

"Company's coming," Yukiko said, opening her eyes. Seichi placed the papers back exactly as he found them and stood, a nearly invisible tension marking his stance.

"Seichi-san, Yukiko-san, how has your day gone?" Kurenai's voice preceded her through the doorway, and Seichi's shoulders relaxed. He slipped his right hand into his duster pocket and pulled out a deck of cards.

"The boys did their level best to drive me insane, but we survived," Yukiko said wryly. "I want to leave them here at the guard station until someone can escort them home. I don't trust them alone and Sasuke shouldn't be unguarded anyway, not until his brother is eliminated. I just need to send in my report and the escort request. Where do they keep the messenger birds?"

A flicker of emotion passed over Kurenai's face too quickly to decipher, and Yukiko stiffened. "I already confirmed Sasuke's location," Kurenai said. "I had to. Around noon, this station received word that yesterday a small group of Mist-nin penetrated the village defenses--"

"What defenses?" Seichi said as cards cascaded from hand to hand. "The military police run all the patrols except the gate guards, and without the Uchiha..." He drew a card across his throat. "Wounded deer, and the wolves are circling."

Kurenai frowned. "Yes, well, in any case, the Mist-nin reached the hospital before they were intercepted. They were aiming for Uchiha Tsukihime."

"Oh, _shit_. Is she all right?" For Naga's sake, and for Sasuke's, please let the girl be alive.

"Still in a coma, and with a few bruises from being tossed over somebody's shoulder, but otherwise unharmed," Kurenai said. "We assume their goal was capture, not assassination. But that's not the worst part. A two-man team of Cloud-nin took advantage of the confusion and penetrated the defenses on the other side of town. They went for your apartment building."

Sasuke. They had been looking for Sasuke. Enemy ninja had gotten into Konoha -- into her _home_ \-- and they'd been looking for Sasuke. Who was out of the village, stowed away on an undercover mission that was distracting his potential guards, and heading into territory controlled by the very people who'd just tried to kidnap him.

Shit.

Now what was she supposed to do?

\---------------

It would be easy to escape from Yoshitaka, but there was no point to that. Naruto's sister and the caravan guard would find him before he could get anywhere useful, and he didn't know where to go in any case. Nobody knew where his brother was.

Sasuke picked half-heartedly at his yakitori and tried to tune out both Yoshitaka's lecture on responsibility and Naruto's constant, annoying interruptions. What was the point of anything? He'd overhead half a conversation and jumped to conclusions instead of gathering more information like a real ninja would. Itachi would never make a mistake like that.

"I'm going to bed," he said into a break in Yoshitaka's lecture. "Where's the room key?"

The man handed the key across the small table with an air of relief. "Here. Thank you for behaving, Sakama-kun, and please take your impossible friend with you!"

"I'm not impossible," Naruto protested. "You just don't wanna admit I found holes in your stupid lecture."

"Shut up," Sasuke hissed at him, and then bowed to Yoshitaka, the way his mother would have told him to. "Sorry for the trouble." Then he dragged Naruto through the common room of the inn, heading for the stairs.

"Jerk," Naruto muttered, trying to pry Sasuke's fingers off his sleeve. "I like Yoshitaka-san. He actually talks to me, not like you. What's the point of being undercover if we don't get to do anything interesting?"

The point was that if Sasuke felt awful, it wasn't fair for Naruto to be happy. But he couldn't say that. "The point is to stay alive, idiot, and the more time you spend with anyone, the less you watch your mouth. You'd give everything away to Yoshitaka-san by the end of the night."

"I would not!"

"Would so."

"Would not!"

"Would--" Sasuke felt like beating his head against the wall. He unlocked the door of their room and shoved Naruto inside. "Stop acting like a baby! You're stupid, you talk too much, and it's your fault we're stuck in the middle of nowhere messing up your sister's mission. I hate you."

Naruto's blue eyes narrowed under his green-dyed eyebrows, and the whisker marks on his cheeks seemed to darken. "Oh yeah? I hate you too, bastard, and it's not like I _made_ you come with me," he snapped, and yanked the key out of the lock. "If I can't do what I want, you can't either. Why don't _you_ go talk to Yoshitaka-san!" Naruto shoved Sasuke back into the hallway. Then he slammed the door.

The deadbolt slid home with a quiet finality.

Sasuke clenched his fists and glared at the door. He could break it down or pick the lock -- any first year student could manage simple civilian locks -- but that wasn't the point. The point was that Naruto had won. He'd flipped the situation so he was in control and Sasuke was reacting to his actions instead of the other way around. If Sasuke tried to get into the room now, he'd just be confirming Naruto's victory.

"Loser," he muttered.

Then he skulked back downstairs and out into the evening. The Seven Larks sat inside a low stone wall, with the stables and wagon house to the left and the inn to the right, separated by a bare, dusty yard. Four floodlights chased away the shadows along the walls, but left the center of the yard swathed in charcoal gray. As Sasuke opened the inn's door, yellow light spilled around him into that patch of shadow, revealing Naruto's sister and Tsukene Seichi.

Neither of them reacted to the sudden light in their eyes. Sasuke tallied another mark on a mental scroll. He was almost certain Seichi was a ninja, but not quite sure enough to say anything. He didn't want to look stupid if he was wrong.

"Sasu-- Sakama-kun! It's funny to see you outside; we were just talking about you." Naruto's sister raked a hand through her hair and looked worried. "Um. We have some news from home, about your family. Let's go somewhere more private and talk."

The world was sharp-edged and clear and divided between the white of the floodlights and the black of the shadows. Sasuke dug his fingernails into the bandages on his palms. The fabric shifted and pulled over raw scabs.

"You'll reopen your cuts if you keep doing that," Seichi said, mildly. "Crippling yourself is pointless."

Sasuke kept his hands clenched, but he changed the angle of his fingers, just enough to lessen the pressure. "Whatever. Tell me about my family. Tell me what else he did." His voice shook. He didn't want to know, didn't want to see more dead relatives in brilliant, exacting detail every time he ran out of ways to distract himself.

But he had to know. He needed to know what Itachi had done, what he had to avenge. No matter how many nightmares he got, he had to know. He couldn't afford to be weak.

Naruto's sister and Seichi exchanged an unreadable glance. After a second, she waved her hand and he nodded. "Let's go inside, to our room. It's quieter."

Sasuke followed, tallying another mark.

Their room was a clone of his and Naruto's. The only difference was the extra bags leaning against the wall and the deck of cards on the nightstand, which Seichi immediately scooped up and began shuffling. Naruto's sister locked the door, closed her eyes, and ran through a handful of seals. Something prickled faintly over the back of Sasuke's neck, and a curtain of silence seemed to fall around the three of them.

"Tell me," he said.

Naruto's sister raked both hands through her hair, sighed, and sat down on one of the beds. "Yeah, okay. First of all, right now you're not the only surviving Uchiha. One of your cousins, Tsukihime, is in the Konoha hospital. We didn't tell you before because she's in a coma and nobody's sure if she'll wake up."

The world had gone edged and colorless again, holding its breath.

"There might be other survivors, too," the woman continued, "but nobody's sure. See, your brother killed everyone who was in Konoha, but there were eleven Uchiha out on missions that night. We've only confirmed four deaths, plus Tsukihime. That leaves six unaccounted for. Apparently Itachi used clan codes to send them into hiding, and now it's a race to see if we can reach them before he does."

Survivors. There might be survivors. He wasn't the only one left, and _nobody had told him_. Sasuke's fingers twitched, tightening against his palms.

"Are you okay?" Naruto's sister asked.

"Who was gone? I saw-- I didn't look for everyone, not once I saw-- I just ran home, and then-- and then--" His voice was shaking again. He shifted his eyes to the window. Before breaking glass, you had to wrap your hands in cloth or use a shielding jutsu he didn't know yet, to keep the shards from wounding you. "Who did he miss?"

"We don't know whether he missed them," she said. "That's why nobody told you, because we didn't want to disappoint you if-- well, if it turned out we were wrong. Anyway, I don't have the list. It's classified."

"Uchiha Kensuke, Mayumi, Noriyama, Hanzo, Shiburi, and Akaro," Seichi said. "They're your family. You have the right to know." He dealt a cross-shaped array of cards onto his bed and went back to ignoring the conversation.

Sasuke matched names to faces. Nobody he knew well, nobody who spent much time in Konoha -- for some reason, anyone in the clan who didn't join the military police tended to avoid the village. Tsukihime and Akaro were closest to his age, but they were both from outer families, so he hadn't seen them often, only when they practiced in the central park or when the whole clan gathered for special ceremonies.

"Sasuke? There's more, and you need to know." Naruto's sister sounded gentle, like she was trying to coax a scared dog to her hand or a kitten from a tree. It was insulting. He wasn't like that anymore, not since Ita-- He didn't need to be protected.

Sasuke started one of Iruka-sensei's exercises, trying to figure out how each thing in the room could be used as a weapon. The window was easy; glass was sharp. The lamp on the nightstand could be a bludgeon, the bulb a slashing weapon, the cord a whip or a strangling wire. He couldn't lift the beds, but the sheets would make good distractions. They could also be used as nets or rope.

Naruto's sister frowned. "Pay attention, Sasuke. This is important. Yesterday a group of Mist-nin slipped into Konoha and tried to kidnap your cousin Tsukihime. At the same time, two Cloud-nin went to my building, probably trying to kidnap _you_. You don't have a clan to protect you anymore and a lot of people are interested in your bloodline limit. So this is what we're going to do."

She held out her hand, five fingers raised. "First, I'm going to stay in Nagarehiya with you and Naruto, until someone can come from Konoha to take you home. Then you're going to keep pretending to be Sakama, even in Konoha. You're going to stay with a jounin until the military police get the village patrol schedules sorted out. You can't attend the academy for a few weeks, or go outside the village walls. And you can't tell anyone that some of your relatives may be alive." All her fingers were folded down now, one for each sentence. She turned over her fist and opened her hand again. "Are we clear?"

The table and chair would be easy to break, and then he could use their legs as makeshift bokken. The pitcher of water could be thrown; so could the shallow bowl sitting beside it. The curtains were like sheets, only smaller -- whips or distractions.

"Sasuke, are you listening to me?"

Anything could be deadly, if you looked at it the right way. Even something as soft and useless as a pillow could be used for one of the oldest vanishing tricks. You let the enemy slash it open and used the explosion of feathers or cotton as cover while you ran or countered.

Finally, Sasuke felt calm enough to meet the woman's eyes. "I'm not going back."


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Thirteenth, in which the differences between chuunin and trainee ninja are made very clear, Kakashi kindly gives exposition about the Uchiha, Naga and Kafunnokaze are cute, Eiji and Ginji get into hot water, and Sarutobi Hokage-sama attempts to save the author from a horrific plot hole. (Time will tell whether he succeeded.)

"I'm not going back," Sasuke said.

Yukiko blinked. Huh?

"Of course you're going back," she said after a moment of pure disbelief. "I'm not asking. I'm giving you an order."

"You're not my guardian. And if Naruto's not a ninja yet, I'm not either -- we're both only students -- so you're not my commander or team leader. You can't give me orders," Sasuke said, still showing that eerily calm surface. Yukiko had no clue what was going on in his head, and she wished it weren't unethical to use genjutsu to pull him under and make him talk.

"For all practical purposes, I _am_ your guardian. Even if I weren't, I'm an adult and you're a kid. But that's irrelevant." And why had she even responded in the first place? Arguing over authority meant you'd already lost -- she'd learned that from Naruto.

She changed her line of attack. "At least two villages would love to kidnap you, and you don't want to know what Mist-nin and Cloud-nin would do to you to get their own version of Sharingan. You're going back to Konoha where you'll be safe."

"No."

Yukiko folded her hands to stop herself from shaking him. "Okay, so you're going home tied up and under protest. I'm sure Naruto will have lots of fun drawing on your face and otherwise making you look like a complete idiot. That's your choice. Seichi and I will take you to the guard post in the morning."

"No," Sasuke said again. "I don't need to be safe. I don't care what happens to me as long as I get strong enough to kill Itachi. I don't care about Konoha either. You couldn't protect my family, and you didn't even tell me my cousin was alive. I'm not going back." He folded his arms and glared at her in a miniature version of his clan's typical disdain.

Yukiko stifled the urge to scream. Then she set her hands in a rat seal and flicked a delicate network of chakra around him. "Yes, you are. Now go to sleep."

Seichi caught the boy before he hit the floor. "Clean work."

"It's always easier when the target doesn't know how to fight back, and I shouldn't have wasted time arguing in the first place," Yukiko said, slightly embarrassed. Seichi straightened, Sasuke's torso and legs curled awkwardly in his arms like a jumble of severed body parts rather than a living child.

Yukiko turned away and gathered Seichi's cards. The thick paper was smooth, slightly worn around the edges, and warm from his hands. "Thanks for grabbing him before he cracked his head open. Take him to the boys' room, will you? He should sleep straight through to noon unless I undo the jutsu."

"Thorough work, too," Seichi murmured. "Do you want me to explain anything to the fox brat?"

Yukiko twisted back around, cards crumpling in her hands. " _Never_ call him that. His name is Uzumaki Naruto, and you take him for who he is, not what his body imprisons, or I will make your life a living hell until we get home."

Seichi shrugged; one of Sasuke's arms slid off his shoulder and swayed with the motion. "I don't care about the Kyuubi. I just thought fox brat sounded more polite than hyperactive menace. I won't do it again. Also, you can have that deck of cards. They're less efficient weapons once they're bent and torn."

He opened the door one-handed and slipped into the corridor.

Yukiko stared at the sheaf of cards in her hands. Slowly, she began smoothing out the folds.

\---------------

They reached Kaiminori just before sunset. The dogs stumbled across Itachi's scent halfway there and Kakashi decided to follow the trail rather than heading directly for the village, in case Itachi had swung off in an unexpected direction.

Suisen checked in with the local Grass guard-post, Kohaku went in search of take-out for dinner, and Kakashi took Naga and Kafunnokaze to reserve two rooms at the inn. "Girls in one, boys in the other," he said. "No hanky-panky unless I get to watch." He winked.

Kafunnokaze stood on Naga's foot until she subsided.

Five minutes later, Kohaku and Suisen arrived carrying boxes of rice, vegetable stir fry, tofu with sesame noodles, and pickled crawfish with peapods and water chestnuts. They borrowed some dishes and chopsticks from the innkeeper -- who smiled nervously at such a large group of ninja -- and went upstairs to eat and talk.

"Do you have any clue where Uchiha Itachi might be going?" Kafunnokaze asked as he handed Naga the rice.

She sat on the floor beside him, crossed her legs, and scooped a blob of sticky white onto her plate. Then she handed the box on to Kohaku and shot an inquiring look across the circle to Kakashi. "You're the boss. How much can we tell?"

Kakashi prodded a lump of tofu with his chopsticks. "There were eleven Uchiha out of town when Itachi killed his clan," he said slowly. "Four were military police on local patrols; they're confirmed dead. One was Uchiha Tsukihime, Naga's partner. As for the other six...

"Uchiha Hanzo was leading his genin team on an escort mission in eastern Fire Country. He's presumed dead since jounin-sensei don't abandon their teams. Uchiha Mayumi was training a daimyo's guards on the southern coast and Uchiha Kensuke was guarding our ambassador in River Country. They've both vanished. Uchiha Noriyama and his partner were in Volcano Country. Neither has reported in since the day of the incident. Uchiha Akaro and his team were patrolling the Waterfall Country border. He failed to make a rendezvous and his team is still searching for him. Uchiha Shiburi was on detached infiltration duty in the eastern islands. We have no idea what her status is."

Kakashi tapped his chopsticks against his plate. "I suspect Itachi killed Hanzo first, then swung southwest to kill Mayumi and Kensuke. He missed Tsukihime but presumably continued northeast toward Noriyama and Akaro, and he'll eventually head to sea to reach Shiburi. The problem is that we don't know exactly where his three final targets were, so our chances of confirming their status -- alive or dead -- are less than ideal. And we have no way of knowing how far behind Itachi we are."

The Grass-nin absorbed the information for a long moment, while Naga frowned at Kakashi. "Classified," she reminded him.

"There's no point hiding potentially mission-critical information from our partners," he replied, his voice slightly muffled by rice in his mouth and the napkin held in front of his face. "I'll just kill them if they try to report the details back to Hidden Grass."

"Hey! That's interference in the internal affairs of an ally!" Kafunnokaze said, jabbing a chopstick toward Kakashi. "Besides, what makes you think you could take down all three of us?"

Kakashi smiled, his eye crinkling into that maddening crescent. "You and Naga would remove each other from the equation, which leaves one jounin with over fifteen years of field experience against two chuunin with less than ten years' experience combined. Do the math."

"He has a point, Kaze-kun," said Suisen, licking soy sauce off her fingers and nudging Kafunnokaze with her elbow. "Stop trying to show off for your girlfriend. You're just making us all look stupid."

"I am not showing off," Kafunnokaze grumbled.

"Yeah, showing off implies that he's doing something tricky and getting it right," Kohaku agreed in a deceptively bland tone.

Naga stifled a smile and grabbed Kafunnokaze's hand before he did anything rash. "Everyone's against me," he said, but he squeezed her hand so she knew he wasn't too insulted. Good. There was no place for personal conflict on missions.

Kakashi tapped his chopsticks on the floor, pulling her attention back. "Are we done with amateur drama hour? Yes? Good. Here are your orders: Naga, summon a raven and send a report back to Konoha. You lot, leave a report with your local agent, whoever he or she is. I promise not to spy on you, but the last thing we need is Hidden Grass accusing me of kidnapping you, or you of treason. Then turn in for the night. We shouldn't need watches here, so catch up on sleep while you can. We head northeast at dawn."

\---------------

Eiji found it oddly difficult to meet Tetsuko's eyes at breakfast, or to touch Mitsuko.

He'd ordered a man killed in cold blood. Before, he'd always managed to avoid direct responsibility. Asking Ginji to keep order did result in occasional casualties, but Eiji had rationalized that away, telling himself that if the troublemakers had seen reason they would have survived. He had no excuses here.

The Cloud-nin was dead at his word. It was a necessary price, but to hold the weight of a human life in his hand, balance it against his goals, and make that choice... Eiji shifted his grip on his spoon to keep from clenching his hands into fists. Ginji's stifled flinches at Mitsuko's hugs and unconditional trust suddenly made a sickening amount of sense.

Eiji forced himself to swallow a few mouthfuls of whatever his housekeeper had cooked, and Ginji did a fair job of distracting Mitsuko by asking her to demonstrate her new calligraphy skills on his arm, but Tetsuko obviously knew something was wrong. There was no way she could fail to notice. All three of them had known each other far too long to hide the existence of a secret.

Finally Tetsuko plucked the chalk from Mitsuko's fist, wiped her mouth with a napkin, straightened her dress, and led her out of the kitchen. "Time for school," she said when Mitsuko pouted. "If you learn another stroke, you can practice on Uncle Ginji again tonight."

Eiji looked at Ginji. His hand was tense on the table's edge, knuckles white with tension. "She won't let us hide much longer."

Ginji shrugged, unsympathetic. "So? We knew she'd find out sooner or later. Besides, you need to talk to someone about Hideo and Tetsuko's more comforting than I'll ever be."

Hideo. Not 'the Cloud-nin.' Hideo. Was it strength that let Ginji use the dead man's name so easily, or just another burnt-out scar the academy and the council's orders had left in his mind and heart?

"How well did you know him?" Eiji asked, looking down at his hands.

"More than some, less than others. We shared a few missions, helped administer a chuunin exam three years back. One time Kote Minami dragged us out to a bar, got drunk, and offered to fuck us both at once." Ginji quirked a ghost smile at Eiji's obvious shock. "I turned her down. Hideo didn't, but I heard he made sure to tie her wrists to the bed frame so he got a head start in the morning. Hideo was a bastard, but he wasn't stupid. He would have unraveled our secrets fairly soon."

"Though not as soon as I have," Tetsuko said.

Eiji jerked his head up and stared over Ginji's shoulder. Tetsuko leaned against the kitchen doorframe, her face stern and unamused. "What in the name of the kami, the elements, and the corners of the world were you idiots _thinking?_ And why didn't you tell me from the beginning? You've gone and caught us all in a riptide, and if you two thought ignorance would protect me--"

"He did," said Ginji.

"Oh, _Eiji_ did -- but not you? Yet you went along with his plan." Tetsuko folded her arms and glared at her brother and husband. "I'm not sure if that makes me angrier at you or him."

Eiji found his voice. "Ginji, you traitor. You must have heard her footsteps. Why did you keep talking?"

Ginji shrugged, pushing his chair back from the table as if to remove himself from the line of fire between Tetsuko and Eiji. "I told you, she was going to find out sooner or later. It's best to get the fight out of the way before the Akatsuki representatives or more Cloud-nin arrive to complicate the situation."

Eiji looked helplessly at Tetsuko. She stared back, blue eyes flat and uncompromising. "Ginji's right," she said. "We won't have time to argue later. We'll need to be rowing in the same direction when your mess crashes down on our heads. So talk, anata. I have no problem hiring missing-nin as security -- it's good economics, even if Hidden Cloud disagrees -- but if you think that's just a first step toward something important? Convince me."

Eiji swallowed. "I--"

He couldn't explain. A week ago he could have, easily. A week ago he'd known he was doing the right thing. But now he'd stepped into the shinobi's own world, and no matter how he justified it, a man was dead at his orders.

Ginji took pity on him. "Eiji wants to bring down the hidden villages," he said. "He wants complete civilian oversight of all ninja, and he wants to outlaw the training of children under age twelve."

"Sixteen," Eiji said.

"Twelve," said Ginji. "Killing can wait until sixteen, but muscle memory and chakra manipulation need to start sooner." He turned back to his sister. "As long as the hidden villages rule the shadows, people will always hire ninja for unethical jobs. As long as the academies systematically train children to be heartless killers, new missing-nin will always threaten the roads and the peace. As long as everyone lives in fear, no land and no technology can be used to its full extent."

"Imagine spreading electricity beyond the largest towns," Eiji said. "Imagine telephones connecting every village, not just isolated systems within cities. Imagine fixing engines to wagons and ships to speed trade. Imagine cultivating the empty lands instead of ceding them to bandits and missing-nin. Think of what we could do without the hidden villages' weight on our backs, Tetsuko!"

He leaned forward, reaching his open hands across the table toward his wife. "Think of no more children stolen away from their families and friends, and given back broken."

Tetsuko's eyes snapped to Ginji.

There was a long, pregnant silence.

"Think of wars fought by thousands of young civilians who have no idea how to disable instead of kill," Tetsuko said eventually. "Think of Cloud-nin killing you and stealing Mitsuko. Think of me and Mitsuko left alone while you and Ginji die in agony." She shook her head. "Eiji, are you crazy? I know you've been gathering missing-nin, but there is no way one civilian town and a rabble of outcasts can take on even one hidden village, let alone all of them."

"True," said Ginji. "That's why we're working on an alliance with a group called Akatsuki. They're a partnership of ten S-class missing-nin, willing to work with us to destabilize the existing order."

Tetsuko unfolded her arms and drummed her fingers against the doorframe, clearly unconvinced. "Assuming you don't get killed in the next month, what happens when the old order is gone and you start building a new one? Will your lawless allies look kindly on that?"

"We'll sail that strait when we get there," Eiji said, trying not to let his own doubt show in his voice or eyes. He kept his hands flat and open on the table, though he wanted to clench them tight enough for his fingernails to draw blood. "I wanted to keep you safe--"

"Safe? As if the council and hunters would ever give anyone associated with traitors the benefit of the doubt!" Tetsuko laughed bitterly.

"--keep you _and Mitsu-chan_ safe," Eiji continued doggedly, "but it's too late for us to turn back now. All we can do is continue forward. Now that you know, why don't you listen to our plans and help me and Ginji find and fix the flaws?"

Slowly, Tetsuko's face softened, until she was merely annoyed rather than furious. She tucked her long brown hair behind her ears and straightened the cuffs of her shirt, settling into her calm, public face. "Fine. We'll go to your office, where you idiots will tell me everything. Then I'll find a way for us all to get out of this alive."

\---------------

Sasuke wasn't speaking to Yukiko. That was okay. She didn't need him to be friendly.

He wasn't speaking to Naruto, either, which was problematic since the kid hated being ignored. From the minute they arrived in the common room of the Seven Larks for breakfast, Naruto had refused to shut up or sit still, constantly trying to get a reaction out of Sasuke. By the time Yukiko shoved them and Seichi out the door and headed for the guard station, she honestly hoped Sasuke would snap and attack -- because if he didn't, she might, and that was no way for a big sister to act.

Seichi seemed to pick up on her mood. They'd barely started uphill before he grabbed Naruto around the waist and threw the kid over his shoulder. "Hey, brat, shut up," he muttered. "The little men in iron shoes dancing in my head are bad enough. You don't need to cheer them on."

Naruto squawked. "Yukiko-neechan! Help!" He started wriggling, then kicking and hitting, but without any real force or aim.

Sasuke snorted. Yukiko glanced down and caught a tiny smile just vanishing off the corners of his mouth. So he _was_ alive inside that silence. Good. Naruto was obviously getting to him. With a bit of luck, the kid would have Sasuke softened up to something nearly normal by the time they got back to Konoha.

Seichi banged once on the guard station door and barged in without waiting for an answer. Fortunately, the guard on duty had been briefed by the other Leaf-nin and didn't try to stop him. "Hey, you, go find Kurenai-chan," Seichi said. "I want to hand these brats over to the sucker who's going to take them home, the sooner the better. They're annoying Yuki-chan and when she's annoyed, my chances go down."

"I hate him. I really, honestly hate him," Yukiko muttered under her breath as the guard slipped through the inner door. Even the assassin persona was better than Tsukene.

Beside her, Sasuke snorted again.

"Laugh it up all you want," she told him. "You're still going back to Konoha under heavy escort. There will be no more surprise adventures from you or my charming little brother."

Sasuke glared at her for a second before he remembered that he was ignoring her and dove back into the eerie blankness he'd worn last night and in the Uchiha compound. Yukiko reminded herself that screaming would only make things worse.

Seichi had dumped Naruto onto the large desk, carelessly sweeping aside the neat stack of paperwork and the brush and ink stone. "Stay still, brat, or I'll call that guard back to do horrible ninja magic to you," he said, shaking one finger in Naruto's face. "And stay quiet. Got it?"

"The door's closed," Yukiko said as Naruto sputtered, obviously wanting to proclaim that he was a ninja and ninjutsu wasn't magic. She spun a fine thread of awareness outward, brushing over the inner rooms. "No clients in the building either. Drop the act, both of you."

"Nobody's gonna do ninjutsu to me! I'm a ninja, dumbass!" Naruto shrieked, lunging at Seichi. "I'm gonna be the best ninja ever and someday I'll be Hokage and then you'll see how great I am and you won't ever--"

Seichi grabbed Naruto by the waist and flung him into the air, then caught the kid by the ankles a bare heartbeat before he slammed into the ground. Naruto shot his hands forward to brace himself against the floor. " _Stop doing that, you jerk!_ "

This time, Sasuke laughed outright.

"One thing all ninja need to learn," Seichi said, in a flat, clinical tone completely at odds with his casual posture, "is respect for the skills of our opponents. Otherwise we overestimate our ability to confront them directly, and that kind of idiocy gets people killed. If you're lucky, you'll be the only casualty. If you're unlucky, you'll survive and have to live with the knowledge that you caused your teammates' deaths. You're not Hokage yet, Uzumaki Naruto. Don't attack me again."

Naruto sputtered in embarrassed fury. "But-- you-- what-- Yukiko-neechan, why didn't you tell me he's a ninja?!"

"I figured it out," Sasuke said, folding his arms and giving Naruto a superior look. "You're just too stupid to pay attention."

Huh. Come to think of it, Sasuke hadn't reacted at all when Seichi started spouting classified information last night. Yet he hadn't said anything. Yukiko frowned, trying to puzzle out the brat's motivation. Naruto made sense, more or less -- at the very least, his occasional insanity was predictable. Why couldn't Sasuke be equally easy to understand?

Seichi turned to Sasuke, his eyes cold and sharp. "Speaking of that, what made you suspect me? It's important for Yukiko-san and me to pass perfectly as civilians."

"You walk too quietly," Sasuke said slowly. "You don't flinch when light hits your eyes -- you control your reaction. I saw your hand move toward a knife once." He paused, then smirked slightly. "Also, I already knew Naruto's sister is a ninja, and there's no way she'd put up with you if you weren't her mission partner."

Seichi went very still, killing intent suddenly flooding through the room. Yukiko found a kunai in her hand with no memory of reaching for it, and she prepared to step in front of Sasuke and try to defuse Seichi before he did something drastic.

"You can't let the kids get--" she started to say.

Seichi laughed, rusty and tired, and the sense of danger vanished like a broken illusion.

"Done in by _flirting_ ," he said, letting go of Naruto's ankles. "The rest I could explain away as symptoms of a life on the road, but that last one..." He shook his head and shot a rueful glance Yukiko's way. "Ame would never have let us live that down, don't you think?"

"Who's Ame?" Naruto asked, swinging his legs down carefully and standing back upright.

Yukiko closed her eyes so she didn't have to watch Seichi's face. "Someone we both used to know. That's all." She was not going to talk about her old teammate, even if Ame was Seichi's cousin. Fortunately, Kurenai walked into the room before Naruto could ask more questions.

"We brought the kids," Yukiko said hastily. "Will they be leaving for Konoha immediately or waiting a couple days for an escort?"

Instead of answering, Kurenai locked and barred the inner door behind her. Then she put a silencing jutsu up around the room and carefully locked and barred the outer door as well. Yukiko's sense of unease grew with each second. Finally Kurenai went over to the disarrayed desk and drew a tightly bound message scroll out of her sleeve. "Nobody is returning to Konoha," she said, unrolling the paper and pinning it flat with an ink stone and a brush rack.

What?

"We received new orders from Sarutobi-sama himself at dawn," Kurenai continued, looking down at the message scroll with a troubled expression. "He said that since the situation in Konoha is obviously unstable, for their own protection it's best that the boys remain away from the village with their locations known to as few as possible. I didn't reveal their identities to the ninja stationed here, which means the three of us, Sarutobi-sama, and whoever received my report are the only people who know where Sasuke and Naruto are. Therefore, we've been given an additional assignment to guard them."

"But what about--" Yukiko began.

"The original mission still stands," Kurenai interrupted. "Konoha can't afford to let Amane Eiji and his associates foment international instability while we're already vulnerable, and there's no time to waste laying cover for another assassin and intelligence agent to infiltrate Sky Country. We're ordered to take the boys to Tengai. Once we've finished our work, we'll circle west along the northern coast until the military police have been restructured and restaffed, and Konoha is safe again."

"Hey, hey, does that mean we get to help with your mission, Yukiko-neechan?" Naruto asked, dashing across the room to yank at her jacket. "That's so cool!"

"It's _not_ cool," Yukiko snapped. "And it's not happening. Has the Hokage gone insane? We can't take kids into enemy territory. Hidden Cloud wants to kidnap Sasuke and use him for spare parts in a breeding program. We'd be handing him over in gift wrap!"

Everyone turned to stare at Sasuke, who looked utterly blank. Then his frown sharpened. "I can take care of myself," he snapped.

"No, you can't," Yukiko snapped back. "If you could, you and Naruto wouldn't have gotten caught in the caravan. You wouldn't even be here, because you'd have taken the time to get better intelligence before sneaking out of Konoha on a wild goose chase."

"Hey!" Naruto said.

"This must be a mistake," Yukiko continued, turning back to Kurenai. "Are you sure there isn't a coded message in with the obvious one?"

Kurenai shook her head, still looking troubled. "Those are our orders. I don't like them any more than you do, but when the Hokage tells us to do something--"

"--we do it," Seichi finished. His eyes had gone cold again, and he flicked the jack of diamonds back and forth between his fingers, snapping it front to back as it wove from forefinger to little finger and back again. "It's not as bad as it sounds. The last place Hidden Cloud will think to look for the boy is under their own noses, and the kids will make our cover more convincing. If," he added, turning his cold stare on the boys, "they can keep a secret."

Naruto gulped and clutched Yukiko's jacket harder. "I can! I keep lots of secrets!"

Sasuke snorted. "I'll make him keep his mouth shut. We'll stay out of your way," he said, his voice far too calm for the situation. Yukiko looked sharply at him. His hands were clenched, fingers digging into his palms, reopening his cuts even through the bandages.

"Hey," she said, walking over and grabbing his hands. "Didn't I tell you there's no sense hurting yourself? Save that for your enemies."

Sasuke yanked his hands away. "Don't touch me. And don't say stupid things. What's the point of waiting for enemies? Nobody knows where _that man_ is, and civilians don't kill people. They don't even train."

Naruto let go of Yukiko's jacket and slapped the back of Sasuke's head. "Don't call Yukiko-neechan stupid, you jerk! You're the one who's stupid. Training isn't just weapons and ninjutsu. You can play hide-and-seek, you can watch people and figure out what they're doing, you can set up practical jokes -- all kinds of stuff! And I bet I'll be the one making _you_ keep _your_ mouth shut 'cause you won't be able to pretend you're not a ninja. So there!"

Yukiko looked helplessly up at Kurenai and Seichi as the boys glared at each other. "I am so sorry," she said.

Kurenai spread her hands and shrugged. Seichi tapped the jack against the rest of its deck, then made all the cards vanish. "Whatever else happens on this mission, it certainly won't be boring," he said. "Let's go pack and meet the rest of the caravan. Tengai awaits."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got some more significant (though small) tweaks to make Seichi's character arc less abrupt and to remove an unfortunate line of dialogue. And when I say unfortunate, I really do mean unfortunate; removing that line is one of the main reasons I wanted to do a an overhaul of "Guardian" rather than just copypasting the chapters as-is from ff.net to AO3. (Which reminds me that I should be updating the ff.net version of this fic as well. Bluh. I don't want to deal with their terrible rich text interface and its penchant for eating my formatting... *whine, grump, complain*)


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Fourteenth, in which, to the author's consternation, Suisen attempts to perform fanservice, Sasuke acts his age, the Amane family will not stop arguing, and Naga fails epically at normal interaction with civilians.

Something was tugging on her hair. Naga woke fast and cold -- forced her breathing smooth and her body relaxed while her mind caught up with the adrenaline rush. Then she remembered she'd asked Akaruime to be her alarm clock.

She sat up and held out her hand to the raven, who hopped up to perch on her arm. "Thanks," she murmured. "Want to go home? Nothing much for you to do until we find Itachi."

"Maybe later. You're interesting," Akaruime croaked. He turned his head, looking quizzically across the room to where Suisen lay sleeping on the other futon. "Wake her, too?"

Naga grinned. "My job, not yours. Find breakfast and meet me when we leave town." She stretched her arm across her futon toward the darkness of the open window and flicked her wrist, giving the raven a boost into flight.

"Cute bird," Suisen said, as the dim light of an emergency lantern filled the room.

Naga turned, not surprised that the other girl was already awake. Any ninja who slept through a conversation a foreign ninja held right next to her was asking to be killed, and Suisen had never struck her as stupid. A little overspecialized, maybe, but never unskilled.

"I've known Akaruime since he was a hatchling," Naga said. "He is cute. He'll also peck your eyes out if you make one wrong move."

Suisen sat up, letting the sheet fall down to reveal her lack of clothing. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Hey, do you think I should try for a summons contract? I was thinking the other day that if I could get birds to hold mirrors, it would let me get shots into angles people would think were impossible. It'd be a nice ace up my sleeve."

"Like you wear sleeves," Naga grumbled. "Get dressed already. What if someone attacked while you're naked?"

"Then they'd be distracted as fuck or embarrassed like you," Suisen said with a razor grin. "I know what I'm doing and you're not on my team, Sasayaki."

"My clan is Tonoike," Naga said, standing and stretching the kinks out of her neck and spine. She ran her tongue out nearly three armlengths to wave just beyond Suisen's reach, taunting. "I wouldn't be a Grass-nin for all the tea in the world."

"Kaze-kun won't turn Leaf-nin either, no matter how gone he is over you," Suisen said. She stood and stretched as well, still naked. Her long blonde hair slithered down her back. "You'd better hope we never go to war. I'll kill you myself if you hurt him. And if chasing this Uchiha gets him killed..." She let the threat trail off.

It would have had more impact if Naga couldn't take Suisen three out of four in sparring matches. " _Clothes_ ," Naga said, turning away to grab her pack off the table between their futons. She unzipped it and fished around for clean underwear. "Dawn's coming."

"Dawn's already here if you're up high enough. Did you know that?" Suisen said, her voice just a little too close for comfort. Naga refused to react. Suisen thumped her own pack down onto the floor boards and continued. "Daylight lasts longer the higher up you are, because the curve of the earth can't block the sun as much. If I had enough birds with mirrors, I could focus sunlight an extra ten or twenty minutes into dawn and dusk. That'd be a handy edge."

"Still haven't figured out how to make your own glow?" Naga said as she changed.

Suisen made an annoyed noise. "I can do fire. Fire's easy. But I can't hold a fire jutsu and channel its light at the same time. Making pure light out of nothing is harder than you think. There's a reason it's my clan's test of mastery." Cloth rustled. "You can look now, you prude."

Naga stuffed her old underwear into the canvas bag for dirty clothes, jammed the bag into her pack, and turned to walk out of the room. "Stop posing at me. I don't swing that way."

Suisen just grinned and slung her own pack over her bare shoulders, following Naga out of their rented room. "I bet I could change your mind if I cared enough to try. Hey, do you think the boys are still sleeping? I owe Haku-kun for dumping his canteen onto me yesterday morning."

"The boys," Kakashi said from behind them, "are already downstairs and outside, helping my nin-dogs do a perimeter circuit of the village. You two get to accompany some more dogs up and down the streets to see if Itachi stopped to make contact with anyone. Meet back here and we'll take ten minutes for breakfast and debriefing."

Five dogs appeared in a puff of smoke and series of quiet popping noises. One of them was, of course, Hibiki. Naga snarled at the dog. The shaggy, square-faced mutt curled her lip and snarled back. She was annoyingly better at it.

"What are you waiting for?" Kakashi asked.

"You to stop sneaking up on me?" Naga grumbled, without really meaning it. "Hey. You, Hibiki. You're with me, and whichever other one of you wants to come. We'll head north. The rest of you go south with mirror-girl."

The dogs swung their heads to look at Kakashi, who nodded his permission. Then Hibiki and a big white bulldog trotted toward Naga, while the other three turned and milled around Suisen's feet. Suisen lifted her right leg, bent it at the knee, and pouted elaborately as she brushed the sudden dusting of dog hair off her shiny tights.

"Don't know who she thinks she's fooling with that princess act," Naga grumbled as she headed down the stairs and out the door. The dogs swung out to either side of the street, sniffing at the doors of the various shops and houses. "If she just likes those clothes, whatever, but she's so _annoying_ about it."

"Humans usually are," Hibiki agreed. "You mate even when you're not fertile -- it makes you stupid. Like you and the boy who smells like a damn moldy spice shop."

"He does not," Naga snapped. "Keep your nose out of my life."

Hibiki opened her mouth in an imitation of a grin, her tongue lolling out bright pink and wet between her sharp white teeth. "Which of us is the scent tracker? That boy smells like poison; no dog would live with him. Also, your damn target went into this building." She reached one paw up to make a claw-scratch mark in the doorframe of a small grocery shop.

Naga sighed. She was losing an argument with a dog. So embarrassing. "Great. We'll go in and talk to the owner. Get your packmate to tell Kakashi we might have a lead."

She picked the lock and slipped into the darkened shop.

\---------------

The caravan that left Nagarehiya was not quite the same caravan that had entered. Yoshitaka-san and one other merchant stayed in the city or turned on to another route, and a group of six teenagers heading north in search of harbor work received permission to share Kurenai's escort in return for a nominal fee.

Naruto spent the entire day trying to befriend the newcomers, to little avail.

Sasuke trudged alongside the communal wagon that Seichi and Naruto's sister were driving and tried not to think about much of anything. He had equally little success.

Watching Naruto hang around the six teenagers -- four boys and two girls, all laughing and smiling like the world was at their feet -- was painfully like watching himself hang around Ita-- around his brother, back before... _before_. No wonder Itachi had always pushed Sasuke away. Who had time for indulging needy little brats?

Especially when you were plotting to destroy everything.

Something light and sharp-edged hit Sasuke in the forehead, jolting him out of his stewing thoughts. He scowled and looked around for Naruto.

The orange idiot was nowhere in sight. Instead, Seichi was sitting sideways on the front seat of the wagon and grinning at him, blue eyes mocking behind his too-long bangs. "You need to pay more attention to what's around you," he said, tucking a pack of cards into an inner pocket of his long coat.

"Seichi, leave Sakama-kun alone," Naruto's sister said with a warning tone, though she kept her eyes fixed on the mules she was driving.

"I can't help it!" Seichi said. "He's so cute when he's feeling righteously put-upon. He's like a little thundercloud stomping along beside us, Yuki-chan. I almost expect to see lightning in his hair."

Naruto's sister untangled her right hand from the reins and flicked Seichi in the back of his head. "Don't push it. Go find Yuu-kun and bother him instead, if you're that desperate for entertainment. Sakama-kun, if you're going to get lost in your head, sit up here beside me where you won't get into any accidents while you're distracted."

Sasuke shook his head. He didn't want to get close to Naruto's sister. She acted nice, and she pretended to listen and care, but she lied. She'd used genjutsu on him like he was a baby throwing a tantrum.

"I'll go with Seichi," he said as the man slid down from the wagon.

Naruto's sister sighed. "Great. Three of you together with no sane person to play referee. Try not to cause any new crises, okay?"

"Don't worry so much, Yuki-chan," Seichi said brightly. "The boys and I will be fine. Right, Sakama-kun?" He caught Sasuke's eyes and his face flashed cold for a second in tacit warning.

"I won't start anything unless the moron does," Sasuke said.

Naruto's sister groaned. "We're doomed," she said in exaggerated gloom, but a tiny smile crept across her face in counter to her words. She turned to look at Seichi and Sasuke, and the smile turned wry. "Go get Yuu-kun to stop pestering those teenagers to let him join their conversation. Think of something interesting you three can do and let him invite the others to join _you_. Tell him I said it's a trap for their minds."

"Sneaky," Seichi said, and laughed. He reached down and grabbed hold of Sasuke's hand so fast and smoothly that Sasuke had no chance to avoid him. "Come with me, my little thundercloud; let's find some sunshine to cheer you up. Then we'll have rainbows and maybe Yuki-chan will smile at me."

"Not at you," Naruto's sister said, but she didn't sound very annoyed and that tiny smile was still lurking at the corner of her mouth. "Sakama-kun, it's not fair of me to ask, but please keep Seichi and my little brother from making complete idiots of themselves."

Sasuke blinked. Why would she ask him to look after a fully trained ninja? That made no sense. And it was, so far as he could tell, impossible to stop Naruto from being loud and stupid.

Naruto's sister winked at him.

Sasuke's mind flashed back to the way his cousin Shisui would sometimes whisper in Sasuke's ear about how serious and overworked Itachi had become, and wouldn't it be fun to play a little game, a little trick or two, and make him relax for the afternoon? If Sasuke would just play along... Then Shisui would tip his head sideways and wink, with a cheerful grin flickering in the depths of his dark eyes.

It was the same wink, the same game, only this time Naruto's sister wanted him to play with that loud-mouthed idiot, not with his-- with--

"Fine," Sasuke said, and let Seichi pull him away, walking toward the lead wagon.

When they were out of Naruto's sister's line of sight, Seichi reached down with his left hand and loosened Sasuke's fingers where they were digging into his larger palm. Sasuke flinched at his lack of control. It was one thing to hurt himself, but a ninja who struck a target by accident was shamefully unskilled.

Seichi shook his head when Sasuke tried to yank his hand away. "Pushing everything down doesn't help," he said softly. "Trust me, I know. The best you can do is split yourself into pieces and even that won't work forever. Whatever you're feeling will keep coming back until you work through it."

"It will work until Itachi-- until my brother-- until I kill him," Sasuke said, reaching again for that cold, calm place inside his head, where everything was clear and nothing could touch him.

Seichi looked down at his bloodied hand for a long moment, his face gone cold and hard, but somehow sad underneath the ice.

"Your choice," he said.

Then Seichi smiled and pointed forward with their joined hands. "Why don't you sneak up on Yuu-kun and stick rotten leaves down his back? It'd be funny, and I promise I won't tell Yuki-chan on you!"

Sasuke looked at the trampled, fraying residue of last year's leaves that lined the edges of the road, where the huge, ancient trees spread their branches to block out the summer sun. He looked at Naruto, trudging dejectedly behind the six laughing teenagers. He glanced sideways at Seichi.

He bent and picked up a clump of leaves in his free hand. Seichi grinned and released him, waving his arms forward in encouragement.

Sasuke shoved the leaves into Seichi's trousers and ran forward to Naruto's side.

\---------------

"I still don't see how you intend to come out of this without the entire town dead and razed to the ground as a reminder to anyone else crazy enough to go up against the hidden villages," Tetsuko said as she stalked in a rough circle around Eiji's office: door, bookcase, window, desk, door, and around again. "It's one thing to spread propaganda -- dangerous, but at least potentially survivable. It's another entirely to raise what amounts to an armed rebellion. You're trying to destroy a way of life and ninja believe in preemptive defense."

"Propaganda is tolerated because it doesn't work," Eiji said yet again. "People have dreamed of life without the shinobi yoke for generations. The only thing that's changed is that the shinobi organized themselves to hold our leashes more efficiently than ever. If they can band together, why can't the rest of us? We outnumber them nearly a hundred to one. They can't kill us all; who would support them then? And if we can use propaganda to get some of them on our side, or at least sympathetic enough to sit out the conflict..."

He leaned back against his desk and spread his hands. "I know it's dangerous. Of course I know. But we'll only have the element of surprise once. We have to move fast so that by the time one of the villages notices us, we'll have the strength to withstand them. If we survive the first battle, we become a legend. From there, everything is negotiable."

"And if we die, which is more likely, we become a cautionary tale to scare children for a thousand years," Tetsuko snapped. She yanked a handful of her long brown hair in frustration. "Idiots! Ginji, why didn't you tell me sooner so we could talk sense into him? You know the odds he's set us against."

Ginji shrugged from his perch on the windowsill. "He asked me under the confidentiality clause in my contract."

"I'm your sister," Tetsuko snarled.

"He's my employer," Ginji said calmly. "For the duration of my contract, he owns me."

Tetsuko turned and slammed the heel of her hand against the office door. "Have I mentioned that I hate ninja conditioning?" she said to nobody in particular. "Listen to him, Eiji. Flip that switch so he's thinking in their patterns, and family means nothing to him anymore. Bastards. May they drown screaming in a typhoon."

Eiji stepped forward and wrapped his hands around his wife's shoulders, pressing the thin cotton of her dress to her warm skin. "Why do you think I want to destroy the hidden villages, anata? Why do you think Ginji agreed to help? If he really thought it was a bad idea, he would have told you and stopped me."

Tetsuko let her head fall forward to rest on the door, tension draining from her body as if she were too tired to care anymore. "Why is it that the one thing he managed to keep despite the training is his blind faith that you know what you're doing?"

As much as Eiji joked about fearing his wife's temper, this weary disapproval was even worse. She only got this way when she was near a drastic decision. Eiji slid one hand down to her waist and tugged gently, turning her around to face him. "Tetsuko. I'm sorry we shut you out. We should have asked for your advice from the start. Please forgive us?"

"You could never mean nothing to me," Ginji added from across the room. "Twins, remember? Eiji hoped you'd be safer outside our mess. I did tell him we should bring you in."

Tetsuko looked sourly over Eiji's shoulder toward her brother, a spark of anger flaring back to life in her eyes. "I will never understand why Aunt Takara's partner sponsored you into the academy instead of me. You _have no brain_. Neither do you, Eiji. They'd take me and Mitsuko on suspicion and torture me until I confessed, whether I knew anything about your plans or not."

"They wouldn't," Eiji said, pulling her into a tighter embrace.

"They can't take you if you aren't here," Ginji said, appearing suddenly at Eiji's elbow. "If things get bad, you and Mitsuko are taking a long trip out of the country under false names. Rika and Takeshi will get you clear."

"You told the harbormaster and your senior captain before you told me?" Tetsuko asked in disbelief. "Eiji!"

"It wouldn't break us if they died," he said hastily, rubbing his hand over the small of her back and wondering when Ginji would have told him about this contingency plan. Ginji wasn't supposed to keep secrets from _him_. They were in this together, and that meant--

Oh. _Oh_. No wonder Tetsuko was so hurt.

"I'm sorry," Eiji told her again. "We were wrong. I promise we won't hide anything from now on. Whatever you want to know, just ask."

"I want to know plenty," Tetsuko said. "Starting with why you think you're more expendable than I am, because if you think it wouldn't break me to lose you, you have your head stuck so far up your--"

Someone knocked on the door. "Hey, boss! Message for you," Shio Rika called.

Eiji jumped, then turned to shoot a questioning glance at Ginji. Had they been overheard? "One-way silence jutsu," Ginji said. "Sound travels in but not out. Answer the door before Rika gets suspicious."

Tetsuko stuck her hand sideways and turned the knob, pulling the door in and open. "Make it fast," she said, leaning back against Eiji.

Rika glanced at Tetsuko's disheveled hair, Eiji's rumpled shirt, and Ginji standing right beside them instead of across the room away from accidental human contact. She grinned knowingly. "Strategy planning session, eh? I didn't see a thing. Anyway, a courier from Thunder Country dropped this off at the docks with your name on it. Here you go." She tossed a tied scroll in Eiji and Tetsuko's general direction. Ginji slid around them and caught it neatly in one hand.

Rika laughed and continued. "Ginji-san, I need to run the new security setup past you. Stop by the docks this afternoon -- if that's all right with you, boss?"

"Fine," Eiji said. "Thank you, Rika."

"Anytime, boss." She nodded and closed the door, still grinning.

"'Didn't see a thing,' she says. In three hours rumor will have us engaged in a secret incestuous threesome. Again," Tetsuko said ruefully.

Despite his better intentions, Eiji laughed. "When do they think we'd have time? The only reason you and I get any space to ourselves is because we can dump Mitsu-chan on Ginji. But at least if people are watching us for scandal, they won't be looking for revolution."

"The more misdirection we can create, the better," Ginji said, looking up from the unrolled scroll. "This is a message from Hoshigaki Kisame, the Akatsuki representative. He'll be at the Ten Drums inn in two days. We need to get ready."

\---------------

The apartment above the grocery shop was accessed via a staircase in the stockroom, so Naga assumed whoever lived there was the person she needed to question. Nobody answered when she knocked, so she picked the lock, used a handy jutsu Iruka had taught her to flip the deadbolt, and walked in.

The apartment was dimly lit: one lamp in the narrow bedroom and a sliver of brighter light seeping out from under the closed bathroom door. The shopkeeper was singing in the shower, in a clear if slightly off-key alto.

Naga turned on the kitchen light and busied herself making cheap green tea from the shopkeeper's own supply. Pointless, really -- no way was a civilian going to be happy about a ninja in her home -- but being raised in a restaurant by a woman whose answer to a crisis almost invariably involved a tea ceremony tended to ingrain certain habits. Naga told herself the tea would make her seem more friendly and harmless. If nothing else, she'd have something to do with her hands.

She poured some tea into a rice bowl for Hibiki and sat down to wait.

Five minutes later, a short middle-aged woman opened the door in a rush of sandalwood-scented air, still singing as she wrapped a hand towel into a makeshift turban around her curly black hair. Then she noticed Naga in the kitchen and stopped dead in the doorway, wearing nothing but a bath towel and a pair of ragged hemp sandals.

"Hi," Naga said, carefully looking at the woman's face instead of the edge of her towel. "I have a few questions about a customer you dealt with five or six days ago. Want some tea?"

"What are you doing in here?" the shopkeeper said blankly. "You don't belong here."

"She told you. She's here to ask some questions about a missing-nin who was in your shop," Hibiki said, leaping gracefully onto the tiny kitchen table. "The sooner you answer, the sooner we'll leave."

"We can wait while you get dressed," Naga said as the shopkeeper pulled her towel tighter around her body.

"You're a child," the shopkeeper said, still sounding slightly disconnected from reality.

"I'm a ninja," Naga corrected, annoyed. Besides, she was almost fifteen. That was nearly grown up even by civilian rules. "Look, sit down, have some tea, answer a few questions. Then I'll be gone and you can pretend this was all a bad dream. Okay?" Immediately she wanted to kick herself. Asking for permission gave the shopkeeper way too much implicit power, just like offering to wait for her to dress. But it was too late to start over.

"You broke into my apartment! That is not okay," the shopkeeper said, her expression finally snapping into anger with an undertone of fear. "And that's my tea! You broke into my home and you're drinking my tea." Her free hand clenched into an awkward fist.

"We've already established that," Hibiki said, lying down on the table and twitching her shaggy tail slowly back and forth. "Can we move on now? I can call Kakashi if you'd rather hand the job to him," she added to Naga.

Naga hid a grimace behind her teacup. Funny as it might be to see Kakashi's reaction to a half-naked woman -- because for all his innuendos and little books of erotica, Naga didn't think he had any interest in actual sex -- throwing an unprepared person into conversation with him was cruel and unusual punishment. Also, he was male. Bringing him here now would be tacky at best. "Don't bother, I'll handle it," she muttered to Hibiki, then looked back to the shopkeeper. "If you're not going to get dressed, I'll start the questions. Sure you don't want some tea?"

"It's my tea. You can't offer me my own tea. It's probably poisoned anyway," the shopkeeper grumbled, but she moved two steps into the kitchen, stopping in front of the window where the faint gray light of false dawn was beginning to wash away the spangled black of the night sky. She reached sideways and unfastened the lock on the lower pane.

"You don't have the training to jump out a second story window without hurting yourself. I wouldn't advise trying," Naga said. Did all civilians react like this to strangers? Naga wasn't even trying to be threatening, and she'd promised to leave as soon as she'd asked her questions. People weren't this jumpy in Konoha.

She'd just get this done as fast as possible. "Five or six days ago, a ninja a bit younger than me came through Kaiminori. He stopped in your shop, probably bought supplies for a trip. He has straight black hair down to his shoulders, black eyes, and two lines running down his face, like creases. Remember him?"

The shopkeeper frowned. "That poor lost boy was a ninja? He was so young. I thought he was buying food for his family while his parents bought other supplies."

Naga's hand tightened around her teacup. Who looked at Uchiha Itachi and saw a lost boy who needed his parents to watch over him? He was a ninja. He'd been in Anbu. He wasn't somebody to worry _for_ ; he was somebody to worry _about_.

"He killed his parents. Killed the rest of his family too," Naga said. "One reason we're tracking him."

The shopkeeper flinched. "Oh."

"You remember what he bought? Did he say anything about where he was going?" Naga asked, leaning forward. Hibiki's tail swished back and forth a hair faster.

"Energy bars and dried fruit, I think," the shopkeeper said slowly. "He didn't buy any water, which I remember thinking was odd, since he said he was traveling west into the tall grass country. Groundwater isn't reliable out there, especially not in summer."

Naga exchanged a look with Hibiki. "He's expecting to be tracked," she said. "I bet he's still heading northeast. Wasn't Uchiha Noriyama supposed to be in Volcano Country?"

Hibiki wrinkled her lips up over her teeth. "Not my damn job to know that. If we're done here, you can ask Kakashi yourself."

Naga glanced back toward the shopkeeper, who was fiddling nervously with the edge of her towel turban. "You remember anything else about the missing-nin?"

The shopkeeper shook her head. "No. He looked tired and worried, he bought some food, and he said he was traveling west. That's all." She took a tiny step forward, sliding her hand along the countertop toward the block where her cooking knives were stored. "You said you'd leave. I want you to get out. This is my home and you need to get out now!"

"Thank you for your help," Naga said, nodding her head toward the shopkeeper. She stood and carried her half-empty teacup to the sink, stretching her arm down to snatch Hibiki's rice bowl off the floor as she went. "Sorry for disturbing you. I'll lock up again as I go." Hibiki leapt gracefully off the table and walked out at Naga's heels.

The shopkeeper stared silently after them until Naga closed the apartment door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hardly any changes here, perhaps because we're slowly approaching the present day and I had started recovering from my dash and semi-colon addiction. I do note, however, that I seem to have misplaced Naga's raven between the opening scene here and the start of ch. 14. I must do something about that...


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Fifteenth, in which Naruto and Sasuke play cards, the Volcano Country border is treated with greater respect than it possibly deserves, Hidden Cloud requests a more detailed report on the circumstances of their agent's death, and a supposedly deserted patch of forest turns out to be a remarkably popular tourist destination.

The caravan stopped for the night at a way station just on the edge of Aokouchuu, a farming village at the south end of a broad valley. The village gates were closed for the night by the time everyone had gotten their things unpacked and settled into their rooms, but Kurenai agreed to delay departure until shortly before noon the next day, to give people several hours buying or selling at the village market.

The way station was small enough that Yukiko, Seichi, Naruto, and Sasuke were forced to share a room, on the principle that they were less likely to kill each other than various other merchants and travelers. Ironic that ninja were saner than civilians, Yukiko thought as she watched a young Water Country woman argue with an older Sand Country woman about the placement of their goods in one of the two wagons designated for the morning market expedition. Then again, was exercising cold judgment over murder really that much saner than killing in the heat of emotion?

When she got back to Konoha, she was going to call in every favor she had to make sure Heika-san didn't assign her to any more assassination missions. This was screwing with her head.

"Kid, don't even think about it," she said, reaching sideways to grab Naruto's sleeve before he could sidle off to throw fuel on the two merchants' argument. "We're going to eat dinner and then we're all going to bed."

Naruto pouted, but followed her inside the way station without verbal protest.

Dinner was very plain, just rice and vegetables with a salty fish broth for flavor, but it was filling and healthy and Yukiko got Naruto to eat a full portion without having to promise too many bowls of ramen when they reached someplace with more culinary variety. All in all, that counted as a win. And Seichi's cover persona didn't tease her about motherhood, which was also a victory.

Sasuke had pulled into himself again, which was less good, but no day ever went perfectly right.

Yukiko herded the boys upstairs, handed them the pajamas she'd bought in Nagarehiya, and sent them off with Seichi to clean up. She indulged herself with a long soak in the women's bathroom before going back upstairs to the crowded little bedroom. Astonishingly it hadn't burned down in her absence. Instead, Naruto and Sasuke were sitting cross-legged on Seichi's bed, playing a game that seemed to involve a lot of hand slapping on the pile of cards between them. Seichi was lying on Yukiko's bed, shirt unbuttoned and hands folded behind his head.

"Yuki-chan!" he said as Yukiko closed the door. "You return! Wonderful. Now if only these brats weren't here to overhear all the endearments I long to bestow upon you." He glanced meaningfully at her hands and pulled one of his own free to gesture at his ear.

Yukiko sighed and wove silence and distraction genjutsu around the room. "What now?" she asked, leaning against the doorframe.

"We need to discuss the details of our mission," Kurenai's voice said, as the kunoichi wavered into visibility like a shattered reflection coalescing in slowly stilling water. Yukiko admired the effect for a moment and resolved to ask about the illusion's details some other time.

"Fine," she said. Then she waved her hand at Naruto and Sasuke. "What about these two, though? It's safer for us and them if they're out of the loop."

"Only to a degree," Seichi said flatly as he sat up and made another deck of cards appear from who knew where. "We all need to know the cover story, after all, and that's what we're nailing down tonight. We can't plan the assassination until we're in place and know our resources and obstacles."

Naruto twitched subtly. Sasuke took advantage of his distraction to grab the sizable stack of cards between them.

Kurenai sat on the luggage rack and gave Yukiko and Seichi a serious look. "You need a reason to stay in Tengai for up to two weeks. I can stay openly for two or three days on the pretext of arranging for future caravans south to Konoha, but after that I'll either need to take clients -- which I can't, for obvious reasons -- or pretend to return home in response to an order. Unless a perfect opportunity falls into our laps, I suggest we wait to strike until I'm undercover."

"Seichi and I are supposed to gather information, so we'd need at least a week anyway," Yukiko said. She frowned. "We're pretending that I'm teaching Tsukene about trading, but what if Seichi says he's decided that this life isn't for him and he'd rather stay in Tengai for a while? I'm sure you can find some kind of job in Amane Eiji's operation."

Seichi hummed in agreement, cards cascading back and forth between his hands. "A clerk would be ideal but even warehouse labor will do in a pinch. What about you? Why would you stay in Tengai with two brats in tow?"

"I'm not a brat!" Naruto said, slamming his hand down a hairsbreadth faster than Sasuke and tugging a thin stack of cards back toward his legs. "Maybe Sasuke is, but not me."

"You're an idiot. That's worse," Sasuke said. Naruto stuck his tongue out and laid down a card, starting a new pile.

Yukiko bit the inside of her cheek for a second, trying not to smile. Then she closed her eyes and tried to think. Why _would_ she stay in Tengai with the kid and Sasuke? Or no, why would she stay in Tengai with Yuu-kun and his friend Sakama?

"I can hang around for a couple days to make sales and place orders for my cousin and uncle," she said slowly, "but after that I'd have to leave along with Kurenai. Unless... Kurenai, could you pretend to go home because there's unrest after-- after recent events, and all available ninja are needed to defend the village? It wouldn't be unreasonable for me to stay in Sky Country for a while if you spread that rumor around. Anyone would understand trying to keep kids out of danger. Then I can look for a temporary job, which should help me gather information."

Yukiko opened her eyes and looked at Kurenai. "Will that work?"

Kurenai's lips parted slightly as she thought. Then she nodded. "I'll send a message home tonight so the orders I receive in Tengai will corroborate our story in case they're intercepted. The only remaining question is whether I should wait inside or outside the city."

"In," Seichi said, turning the queen of hearts back to front to back between two fingers. "It saves us time fetching you when we strike, and Yukiko and I have at least a faint hope of helping you if you get in trouble. We wouldn't be any use if you're out in the trees or down on the shore."

Kurenai nodded again. "Fair point. So our plan is as follows: When we reach Tengai, Seichi will tell everyone he's decided not to keep traveling, and find a job. Yukiko and I will behave normally for two days, after which I'll receive an emergency call back to Konoha and inform anyone who's expressed interest in a southbound caravan that there's unrest in Fire Country. Yukiko will tell people she's decided to keep her brother and his friend away from potential danger for a few weeks and also find a temporary job. We'll all gather information about Amane Eiji's plans and organization until we find an opening for an assassination strike. Once he's dead, Yukiko should leave immediately, using the same excuse of keeping the children safe from trouble. If possible, Seichi will remain in Tengai another week to divert suspicion. Yukiko and I will take the boys back to Konoha together. Agreed?"

"Yes," Yukiko said. Seichi nodded.

Naruto, who had now lost all his cards to Sasuke, shifted awkwardly on Seichi's bed. "Hey, hey, I just wanna ask. What's this guy done that's so bad you have to kill him? Is he like..." He trailed off and glanced guiltily at Sasuke, who glared down at the card deck.

Yukiko winced. Oh, this could be trouble. Normally she was grateful the kid had a strong sense of fairness, but sometimes real life was more complicated than Naruto would readily accept. "Not like that," she said. "But we're pretty sure Amane Eiji is doing things that could start a war, which nobody can afford after the last three. So we're going to kill him. It's not fair, but it's better to kill one person now than to do nothing and let thousands of people die later."

Naruto scowled. "But--"

"I'd rather have my brother dead and the rest of my family alive," Sasuke said without looking up from the cards he was shuffling. "Don't be a baby." His voice was far too toneless for Yukiko's peace of mind.

"Jerk," Naruto said, his attention snapping back to Sasuke. "Hey, quit shuffling and let's play again. And don't cheat! I'm gonna beat you _so bad_ this time."

"You can try," Sasuke said with an almost invisible quirk of his mouth, and began to deal the cards.

"Last game of the night, you two," Yukiko said, walking to the closet and pulling out the bedrolls the way station manager had promised would be there. "Seichi, get off my bed. I'm going to sleep."

She'd figure out how to deal with things in the morning.

\---------------

As they neared the border of Volcano Country, Kakashi peeled away from the trail his nin-dogs were tracking and gestured for Naga and the three Grass-nin to follow him slightly straighter east. It took nearly a minute for the dogs to notice and for Pakkun to race over and bite at Kakashi's sandal in annoyance. "Hey!" Pakkun said. "Wrong direction, idiot. The Uchiha went that way."

Kakashi shook the small dog off his foot. "I know. Keep following it and try to be inconspicuous. We'll rejoin the pack tomorrow, but the five of us will cross the border legally. It may save trouble later."

"Oh, so it doesn't matter if _we're_ criminals so long as you keep _your_ nose out of shit," Pakkun grumbled, but he dashed back to the other dogs and chivvied them into order.

"Pursuit of missing-nin is always legal in countries without a hidden village," Kafunnokaze said, almost idly, as if pointing out a small, nearly unnoticeable flaw in the presentation of a fancy meal.

"You know that. I know that. Everyone knows that," Kakashi agreed. "But civilians and independent ninja clans don't always agree with treaty provisions. I won't hand Itachi extra weapons to turn against us. We do this by the book."

"You're the boss," Suisen said brightly. "Are we going to walk up in plain sight on the trade road too?"

"Of course," Kakashi agreed. "There's no need to startle the good citizens of... what's the border town called, anyway?"

"Aoitourou," Kohaku said.

"Thank you. The good citizens of Aoitourou don't need us disturbing their peaceful lives by skulking about in the night like common thieves," Kakashi continued. "We can hunt evil perfectly well in daylight with nice stamped border passes. Assuming one of you has cash to pay for them, that is."

The three Grass-nin exchanged a complicated network of glances that resulted in Kafunnokaze sighing and pulling a coin purse from one of the many pockets in his modified tactical vest. "Here. And that makes us even for you buying dinner last night." He tossed it to Kakashi, who caught it neatly without seeming to look.

Kafunnokaze grimaced. Naga nudged his shoulder companionably as they loped along at the easy, ground-eating pace practice and chakra made possible. "Hey. Don't mind him, he's just like that. Least he can't steal your poisons like he can copy other people's moves."

Kafunnokaze wrapped his hand around hers, his glove catching slightly on her calluses, and smiled. "I know. It's just annoying to have a jounin treating us like little kids after Gachi-sensei finally turned us loose. If this is what Kakashi's like as a commander, I'd hate to have him as a teacher for real."

Naga laughed. "Me too. One month for the chuunin exam was bad enough."

"But useful!" Kakashi called over his shoulder.

Naga shoved her free hand forward, arm slipping its human shape, and punched his back just hard enough to make him take a half-step sideways to keep his balance. "Don't eavesdrop!"

"Don't make it so easy," Kakashi said, and picked up his pace. "Let's reach the border early enough to buy real food for dinner."

Grumbling, Naga ran faster, Kafunnokaze's hand still clasped in her own.

They reached the dusty, rutted trade road shortly thereafter and followed it through the last stretch of scrubland to the border. No natural landmarks distinguished northeastern Grass Country from southwestern Volcano Country. The soil was too thin and poor for much of anything, and generations of fighting had whittled cross-border trade down to nearly nothing. Yet people had died in droves to establish possession of a few miles of marginal land.

Fighting to defend your home and honor made sense. Fighting for Aoitourou? Naga made a face as they walked toward the heavily fortified town. Really, who'd want the place?

The town was ringed by three wide stone walls, braced by earthworks, each higher than the last until the town itself was invisible behind its defenses. The outermost wall stretched along the Volcano Country side of the border for nearly a mile in either direction before it gave way to a string of boundary stones. The border station itself sat a cautious arrow flight outside the town walls, right on the notional line between countries. It was a squat concrete blister with a single window, no door, and no obvious defenses.

Kohaku stamped on the road as they approached the border, cocked his head, and nodded to himself. "The whole area is mined," he said.

Figured. This town was obviously paranoid.

"Hang on a minute," Naga said. She whistled Akaruime down from his overhead watch and stroked her finger over his beak. "Don't want you shot down by crazy civilians. Head home. I'll call you back when something interesting happens."

The young raven bobbed his head and vanished in a puff of smoke.

Kakashi led the mismatched team to the window and pulled a sheaf of papers from his vest. "Passage for five on behalf of Konoha," he said, his eye crinkling in an exaggerated smile. "We're hunting a missing-nin."

The station guard, a dour middle-aged woman wearing a leather vest and arm guards dyed bright green, spread the papers on the windowsill with one hand. The other stayed out of sight under her desk, most likely holding a weapon or hovering over an alarm.

Naga couldn't decide if the guard was a civilian with some weapons training, a member of one of Volcano Country's three feuding shinobi clans, or a missing-nin who'd ditched her forehead protector altogether. She looked like she'd seen fighting, but something about her felt slightly _off_ for a ninja.

"She's a civilian," Kafunnokaze whispered into Naga's ear. "Aoitourou's been besieged and sacked so many times it's almost paranoid enough to be a hidden village. They train all their kids to fight. If they could use chakra they'd be really dangerous, but the peace treaties don't let them try."

"They don't cheat?" Naga murmured.

"We check," Kafunnokaze said shortly.

The guard frowned at Kakashi's papers. "You're overkill for one missing-nin, and don't think I can't tell the difference between Leaf-nin and Grass-nin. Why are you really here?"

"To hunt a missing-nin," Kakashi repeated easily. "S-class, of course. He violated Grass's territorial integrity on his way, which is why those three joined me and my partner. Plus young love." He waved at hand at Naga and Kafunnokaze, and winked.

The guard sighed. "Whatever. I can't prove you're lying and your papers and fee are in order, so you get to pass. Do me a favor and get out of my town yesterday. We don't need ninja trouble inside our walls."

"We'll leave tomorrow morning," Kakashi said. "On that note, however, we'll need a place to sleep tonight. Would you recommend anyplace in particular?"

The guard's dour face cracked into a brief smile. "Oh, yes. Go to the Laughing Fish, by the eastern wall. Tell Kenta that Haru sent you, with my compliments." She reeled off a string of directions, stamped five cards, and handed them to Kakashi. "Don't lose those until you're out of Volcano Country." Then she raised her hidden hand from under her desk, revealing a device with two buttons, connected by a wire to who knew what. She pushed the blue button.

"The gates will be open for five minutes. Don't dawdle."

Kakashi led the way over open ground to the first wall and through the massive gate. The two inner gates were already open, guarded by more watchful civilians in green leather uniforms. Naga eyed them sideways as she passed, wondering what fighting style they used.

Kakashi obeyed the station guard's directions for the first several narrow, twisting blocks, then turned left instead of right at the square with an elaborate eight-sided fountain decorated with various birds of prey spouting water from their open stone beaks.

"Hey. Didn't the guard say the Laughing Fish was against the eastern wall?" Suisen asked.

"She did. And we're not going there," Kakashi said. "Judging by that guard's attitude, it's either the worst inn in town or it's a death trap full of spy holes and secret agents. We're going to the first public house in this direction instead." He smiled over his shoulder, his eye crinkled into a mocking crescent. "Come on, children, don't dawdle."

"I'm going to kill him," Kafunnokaze muttered.

"I'll help," Naga said. "But let's finish the mission first." She squeezed his hand and followed Kakashi through the narrow, hostile streets toward the promise of dinner and a decent bed.

\---------------

Eiji sent one of his guards to pick up a takeout lunch and ventured down the hallway to knock on Tetsuko's half-open door. "Come in," she said without looking up from the figures she was scribbling on a sheet of scrap paper. "I'll be with you in a minute."

"I thought we could plot world domination over lunch," Eiji said lightly, and smiled when Tetsuko raised her head to meet his eyes. "Hanran's bringing food to my office, and with a bit of luck someone will get word to Ginji in time for him to join us. Will you be done with that in fifteen minutes?"

Tetsuko glanced back down at her work and tidied the papers with a decisive motion. "This can wait. You send someone for Ginji; I'll get some proper dishes for us to use."

Eiji headed downstairs, hiding a grimace as his bad leg twinged in protest at being forced into motion after hours at his desk. The office was mostly empty at this time of day, but two clerks were quietly arguing over paperwork near the back and the representative at the front desk smiled as Eiji walked past toward the main door. He motioned to one of the obvious guards Ginji had stationed outside the building and told the man to call Ginji back to headquarters. The missing-nin nodded and vanished with the baffling speed all ninja seemed to delight in flaunting around normal people, as if reminding Eiji that though he held nominal power as the man's employer, there was nothing he could do to stop any ninja should they choose to turn on him.

Eiji caught his direction of thought and told himself to stop being paranoid. He'd feel better after food and time with his family.

Hanran had set the takeout bags in the middle of his desk and was in the process of pulling out containers, opening them, and making a long chain of hand seals over each one. "I'm checking for poison," she said without turning. "Yes, it needs to be done. Ginji-san will agree with me. I refuse to shoulder the embarrassment of a client dying on my watch from something so easily preventable."

Eiji sighed and began dragging two of the heavy upholstered chairs closer to his desk so Tetsuko and Ginji would have somewhere to sit when they arrived. Ginji slung himself in through the window just as Eiji got the second chair into place and Hanran finished her tests. "All clear," Hanran said, tipping her head to Ginji.

"Good. Stand watch outside and ignore the silence barrier unless it goes down without the standard signal," Ginji said, dusting his hands on his loose black pants.

"Acknowledged," Hanran said, and opened the door, stepping neatly to the side so Tetsuko could enter with a stack of dishes and utensils. Tetsuko paused for a half second, but recovered smoothly enough that only a ninja or someone very familiar with her expressions and the way she moved would have noticed.

"Here we all are," Tetsuko said as Hanran slipped into the hallway and closed the door. "What's the food and what's the argument?"

"Pickled everything on rice, and whatever you want to yell at me about," Eiji said, gesturing toward one of the extra chairs. Tetsuko laughed, a tiny burst of half-vocalized sound, before she shut her expression back down into neutrality. She hadn't forgiven him yet. Fair enough, Eiji thought. He shouldn't have tried to leave her out of his and Ginji's plans. That didn't mean he couldn't keep trying to make her smile.

"Before you two get started, I have news," Ginji said. He scooped a blob of wakame onto his bowl of rice, added some pickled plums, and retreated to the windowsill rather than sit in a chair. "I received a hawk from Hidden Cloud this morning, with a request for a more detailed report on Hideo's death and the missing-nin involved in the supposed incident."

Eiji looked down at his hands. There was an ink stain on his right thumb. He rubbed at it, fruitlessly.

"Was there anything in your first report that would make the Raikage or the Council suspicious?" Tetsuko asked, turning in her chair to face her brother.

Ginji shook his head. "Only the fact of his death. Since whoever sent him was obviously suspicious already, that looks bad no matter how well we explain it."

"What does that mean for your little revolution?" Tetsuko asked.

"It means we have a tighter time limit than we'd hoped," Ginji said. "We're sending a few missing-nin out on every ship that leaves the harbor, and with luck we'll have a solid alliance with Akatsuki nailed down by the end of the week, but I give it ten, twelve days maximum before a team from Hidden Cloud turns up to investigate. Probably undercover." He chewed thoughtfully on a pickled plum, then added, "Probably set to double as assassins."

Tetsuko slammed her hand on the desk. "That is not acceptable. Nobody gets to kill either of you except me. If that level of trouble is building out at sea, we don't sit next to the reef and wait to be smashed to pieces. We raise sails and fly."

Eiji looked up from his empty hands and said, "Tetsuko, no. I'm humbled that you still think I'm worth saving, but I will not abandon Tengai. Too many people depend on our business and too many others have taken up our ideals. What kind of man would I be if I threw them to the sharks to save myself?"

Tetsuko's mouth flattened into a scowl. "Alive," she said.

"In body," Eiji agreed.

Tetsuko eyed him for a long, tense moment. Then she sighed and picked up her chopsticks, twirling them absently between her fingers. "I knew you were a bleeding heart from the day Ginji and I met you, and I married you anyway. I have no one to blame but myself when that virtue becomes a flaw. Fine. There was never a chance for us to stand against a whole hidden village and we certainly can't manage that now that you're already shipped away half your army. If you won't leave Tengai's people, you'd better start thinking of a plan to evacuate the whole damn town. Because you are not dying on my watch."

\---------------

The nameless inn Kakashi eventually found was best described as run-down, but the single room the five of them shared was unmarred by any secret passages or spying devices, and the bean soup they bought for supper was filling and unpoisoned. Nonetheless, nobody objected when Kakashi set them on a two-hour watch schedule all night. Naga took the final shift and extended her arms to flick the others awake from a safe distance when gray light began to seep through the oiled cloth serving as a replacement windowpane.

Kakashi left payment in the middle of the bare floor and led them out of Aoitourou as silently as possible, stopping only to flash their newly stamped border passes at the watchful guards.

They followed the road for roughly a mile, then swung several degrees north, toward the heading Pakkun and the other nin-dogs had taken on the Grass Country side of the border. As they ran, Naga saw Kakashi surreptitiously shaping seals, probably doing something to the summoning bond to tell the pack where he was.

Sure enough, a dozen dogs came bounding over a low hill, their passage shaking the grass and disturbing the scattered scrubby bushes. "That way," Pakkun barked, sitting at Kakashi's foot and pointing with one forepaw. "And hurry up -- it smells like rain later today. We need a solid lead in case we lose his scent."

"You heard the dog," Kakashi said with an elaborate shrug. He neatly dodged Pakkun's retaliatory bite.

They ran northeast at a steady pace, through steadily rising hills. Brown grass gave way to raspberries and scrub maples, then to stands of birch, and finally to the old-growth sentinel pines that lined the northern bay. The forest floor was as open as the land around Konoha, but tree-hopping was out of the question unless they wanted to burn unnecessary chakra: the pines grew straight up and needles stuck out like tiny daggers from even the largest branches. They didn't have the broad, accessible handholds that the deciduous forest of Fire Country offered its inhabitants.

The sensation of being trapped in the open made Naga twitchy, especially juxtaposed against the otherwise comforting weight of leaves blotting out the sky and dimming sunlight to dappled shadows.

The Grass-nin seemed much less bothered, but they were used to open plains and didn't have the same bone-deep ideas of how a forest ought to be. If Kakashi was affected, he kept it hidden well. Naga scowled at his back and resolved to crack his calm at least once by the end of this mission. Somehow, some way, she'd catch him off guard.

In the meantime, she studied the trees, trying to find the similarities and differences between Volcano Country and the forests around Konoha. The trees were different, obviously. The soil was different too, thinner and sandier, a little gray in places with the residue of ash. Hard to say if it was from local fires, or if it had ridden south on the wind after one of the coastal volcanoes blew its top. Patches of deep green moss grew like round, springy pillows here and there among drifts of fallen needles; they hardly seemed fastened to the earth at all, tearing easily away with the slightest tug of Naga's hand. The one squirrel she saw in the distance seemed smaller and redder than the gray-brown squirrels of Fire Country.

And there were no birds at all. Not singing, not hunting, not even flying away from the threat of five humans disturbing their territory.

Naga was halfway up a tree before the significance of that consciously hit her. Then she drew a breath and pitched her voice to carry.

"Ambush!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I have officially caught up to myself, yay! Ch. 16 will go up sometime on Tuesday the 22nd, after I make a couple minor tweaks to the beta draft on my journal. :-)


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter the Sixteenth, in which Naga and Suisen demonstrate how not to dance with a partner, Yukiko and Seichi discuss assassination and dead relatives, and, to the author's relief, Kakashi's interrogation skills end up irrelevant to the plot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that took far too long! Even if you only count from July 2015, which is when I got serious about returning to this story, that's still six months to write four and a half thousand words, and that's ridiculous. I will try to do better with chapter 17, but seeing as I always say that, I completely understand any skepticism on your part. *wry*

The others vanished before Naga had finished her warning -- Kohaku underground, Suisen in a flash of light, and Kakashi and Kafunnokaze simply gone. And not a moment too soon. A rain of kunai pierced the layer of pine needles that carpeted the sandy forest soil, half of them sizzling on contact as if the blades themselves were on fire.

"You are trespassing on the lands of Gouzen-sama, the rightful daimyo of Volcano Country!" a high tenor voice said, echoing and reechoing from the trees with no clear point of origin. "All enemies and spies will be executed! Surrender and state your business and you may survive."

Yeah right.

"We are in lawful pursuit of an S-class missing-nin, under the authority of the Sandaime Hokage and the Master of Hidden Grass. Stand down and let us pass," Kakashi said. His voice echoed in an eerie mimic of whatever jutsu the ambushers had used.

A branch high in a nearby pine tree twitched. Naga grinned. Score one for the Copy Nin. Mirroring always freaked people out. Twitchy enemies got sloppy.

She drew a kunai from her thigh holster, careful not to disturb the pine needles that screened her from view. They prickled through the fabric of her clothes, teetering on the line between itch and pain, but Kafunnokaze's gloves and a bit of chakra let her keep a secure grip on the branch. She was a Leaf-nin. No way would she ever get caught because of a _tree_.

"Your masters have no authority over our country or clan," the Volcano-nin said after a long pause. "If your pursuit were lawful, we should have received a request for passage."

"Pursuit of an S-class criminal is covered under the treaties that ended the Third War. Special notice is not required. We entered Volcano Country legally at Aoitourou. Stand down and let us pass, or I will consider you guilty of aiding and abetting our target," Kakashi said.

He sounded almost bored. Bad move, if he really wanted to get out of this without a fight. On the other hand, if the fight was going to happen anyway, better for the other side to be worked up and wrong-footed.

Naga was glad it wasn't her job to weigh those options.

"Aoitourou is in rebellion against Gouzen-sama's authority. Their paperwork is illegal and invalid," the Volcano-nin snapped. "Surrender and submit to search and interrogation or we will kill you where you stand."

"Hidden Leaf and Hidden Grass are neutral with regard to Volcano Country's internal politics," Kakashi said. "I can't guarantee that my team will strike to incapacitate rather than kill."

"Neutrality is enmity and your scruples are weakness. You have until the count of three to surrender, or die," the Volcano-nin said. "One."

Naga eased along the branch toward the hidden Volcano-nin she'd spotted earlier.

"Two."

She braced her feet.

"Three."

Naga leapt.

The Volcano-nin dropped three seconds later, gurgling around a bruised throat and shattered collarbones. Naga dropped after her target, landed in a light, controlled crouch, and took in as much of the impromptu battlefield as she could.

Seven figures had melted out of hiding, standing in a loose arc around the clearing. Kakashi slouched to her right, deceptively relaxed. To her left, Suisen and Kafunnokaze stood back-to-back, both nursing bloody gashes along their arms in payment for the burns and the coughing fit afflicting two of the Volcano-nin. Kohaku was nowhere to be seen.

"Are you sure we can't talk this out?" Kakashi asked.

The Volcano-nin at the center of the arc -- a tall, thin man with a dark gray tactical vest and a loose, ash-colored scarf wrapped around his neck -- sawed his arm angrily through the air. "Stop mocking us! We found your spies four days ago. Your denials are useless! Gouzen-sama's honor demands that--"

High tenor voice, no patience, definitely thought he was in charge. Naga tabbed him as Kakashi's problem, tuned out his rant, and studied the others instead. Five genin, two on either side of the hothead. Two about her age, presumably with a chance at making chuunin and some potential tricks up their sleeves. Three more at least a decade older, long past any chance of promotion but with a lot of experience to balance their lack of special skills. Two teams, then, which meant Hothead had at least a high-level chuunin as backup. Maybe even another jounin.

The high-level shinobi in question anchored the far left end of the arc: a short, heavyset woman in that same gray tactical vest, only instead of a scarf she wore thick, ash-colored wraps along her arms and legs, from her shoulders and hips all the way down to her fingers and toes. Judging by the shiny burn marks, the fabric was fire-resistant. And the burns themselves were strange, all precise, narrow lines instead of irregular blotches. What fighting style needed that much insulation?

"Excuse me," Kakashi said when Hothead finally paused for breath. "I think you're working from mistaken assumptions. What spies are you talking about?"

The tall Volcano-nin snarled and lunged, a corona of flickering shadows springing to life around his outspread fingers. Kakashi countered with a gout of flame and a rapid dodge halfway up a tree, and Naga shunted their fight to her peripheral attention because she had more important problems.

"Mine!" Kafunnokaze shouted as a wall of dust-choked wind snapped up around four of the genin. He stepped through and vanished, leaving Suisen and Naga to face the last Volcano-nin and her mysterious skills.

As Suisen pulled leaf-attenuated sunlight into her mirrors, the Volcano-nin drew a pair of short metal sticks from a thigh holster. Naga tensed, but instead of throwing them the Volcano-nin flicked her left hand through a rapid chain of seals, then settled the sticks solidly into each hand. Thin streams of sandy earth poured upward and latched onto their rounded ends as if magnetized.

Naga didn't wait to see the end result of the jutsu. Strike fast and hard and it wouldn't matter; a fist to the jaw disrupted anybody's focus. But the Volcano-nin dodged her attack -- tucked and rolled and came up still holding those sticks and their trails of sand -- and Naga lost a precious second avoiding Suisen and catching her balance with a ricochet off a handy tree.

The sand glowed red-hot, then flashed into nearly transparent whips of molten glass. Naga felt the heat on her face and arms from a good three body-lengths away.

Ah. That explained the insulation.

It did not explain how the fuck Naga and Suisen were supposed to take the woman down. Her clothes would protect against Suisen's signature attack, and while Naga was fine taking a slice or two from a normal whip in order to immobilize and strike its wielder, she didn't have any fancy eyes to help her find a safe path around whips that could probably burn through bone.

Start with the easy part: take out the support. Naga faded behind Suisen, angling toward the final Volcano genin who was pulling his wounded and unconscious comrade toward the clearing's edge.

"Hisao, protocol six-black-water," the Volcano-nin called over the roar of Kafunnokaze's whirlwind and the thumps and scuffles of Kakashi's duel with Hothead.

"Yes, Anei-sensei!" the genin said, and swapped himself and his teammate out of sight just as Naga's foot slammed through empty air where his sternum had been.

Naga rolled with the fall and leapt back to her feet. "Fuck."

The Volcano-nin -- Anei -- smiled, thin and sharp. "Nice try." Then she attacked.

The glass whips writhed like living snakes, their paths and lengths set as much by chakra as physics. Years of fallen pine needles flickered and smoked in their wake, and the air itself clapped and cracked in protest at the speed and heat of Anei's strikes -- not as fast as leather or cord, but more than fast enough. Naga hurled herself into a mad dance, weaving around the lashing strands with no space for retaliation and barely time for breath.

A trailing drop of glass snapped off the end of one whip and fell onto the edge of her sandal. The sole promptly caught fire. Naga lost a precious second grinding the embers out and only escaped the next strike by a finger's breadth.

"Tangle her!" Suisen hissed as she dove past in her own evasive maneuver.

Yes. If they could get Anei to cross her whips--

Naga fumbled a trio of shuriken out of her thigh holster and hurled them in a flat arc toward the Volcano-nin. Suisen mirrored her from the other side.

Anei's smile widened. She flicked her whips out to intercept the blades -- the metal warped and melted on contact -- and brought them back around _through_ each other. The glass merged and separated smooth as water, scattering a handful of white-hot droplets. Small fires hissed and crackled to life among the fallen pine needles, licking outward in a ring from the bare ground at Anei's feet.

" _Fuck_ ," Naga said, and arched up and over the next strike, curving her spine well past the limits of human flexibility. Somewhere to her left, Suisen yelped as she miscalculated a dodge.

"Surrender and I'll keep Sukkiro from killing you," Anei said. "We'll even let you go after the interrogation."

"Sorry, can't do that!" Suisen called back. She sounded out of breath.

Naga raked her brain for options. She was fast and had an advantage when it came to contortions, and Suisen's style was built around acrobatics, but they'd probably miss a dodge before Anei ran out of chakra. Suisen needed precious seconds of stable footing to gather enough light for an attack. Even if she got that chance, there was no way something as relatively mild as concentrated sunburn would throw someone armored to withstand molten glass.

Wait.

Sunburn from sun _light_.

The sun had more tricks up its sleeve than heat.

"Glow!" Naga shouted at Suisen. "As bright as you can! And keep moving!"

"But--"

Naga dropped flat to evade a strike, then rolled frantically sideways under the return stroke. Even a near-miss was almost too hot to bear. " _Glow!_ "

Yeah, it wasn't the best idea. Anything bright enough to blind Anei would blind Naga just as well, and probably Kafunnokaze, Kakashi, and Hothead (Sukkiro?) to boot. But it was what she had, so she'd use it.

What else did she have? Trees, pine needles, dirt, two fights at her back, one enemy vanished, one ally doing who the fuck even knew what, no useful jutsu, and not enough shuriken to gamble that one might get through Anei's defense.

Something tickled at the back of Naga's mind, pieces of a plan trying to fit together.

As Suisen's reflected glare hit the threshold of 'ow shit I'm blind,' Naga grabbed a handful of sand and pine needles and hurled it toward Anei. The Volcano-nin dodged. Not blocked! _Dodged_. And came up swinging wildly. She'd lost track of Naga's position and couldn't check everywhere because of Suisen's ever-shifting light.

Naga ran straight up the nearest tree.

On the ground, Anei retracted her left-hand whip, reshaping the glass into something more like a thick kodachi. She spun on her heel, snapped the remaining whip in quick, probing strikes, tilted her head to listen through the rush of Kafunnokaze's wind-wall (still up, what was taking him so long to deal with?) and the thumps and shouts that marked Kakashi and Sukkiro's fight inside a bubble of ashy darkness.

Naga squinted past Suisen's glare and inched out along a wide, heavy limb that stuck into the clearing like a massive, prickly fan. Then she waited for Anei and Suisen to move within range.

One breath. Two. Five. Ten. And... _now_.

Naga chopped the bulk of the branch free with a reinforced knife-hand strike and rode it down. Pine sap flashed into flame as Anei raised her whip and sword to counter, but the net of branches and needles was broad enough to clip the Volcano-nin despite her evasion, and pin her weapons down for a precious second.

"And a second's all you need," Naga muttered to herself as she rolled away from the burning branch and shook out her aching knuckles. Then she nudged Anei with her foot to check that the Volcano-nin was really unconscious -- she'd played dead too often herself not to be suspicious -- before gingerly dragging the woman out of the fire.

Suisen, scorched and sweaty, bent over beside Naga to catch her breath. "I cannot believe you hit her with a tree," she said after a moment. "I know you're a Leaf-nin, but that's taking word association a little too seriously."

Naga shrugged. "Worked, didn't it? Where's Kohaku?"

"Hunting down the genin this one sent to grab reinforcements," Suisen said. "Standard protocol: Kaze-kun and I are the first response. Haku-kun runs perimeter, deals with unexpected whatever, and provides backup if necessary. We didn't need backup because we're awesome, but he can come secure our prisoner _any time now_." She knocked the heel of her foot into the ground in a rapid syncopated pattern.

As the soil rippled in response, Suisen adjusted her mirrors and added, "While he's taking care of that, let's give the boys a hand. You go check on Kaze-kun and I'll shine a light into whatever your sensei is doing with that skinny weirdo."

She dashed off into the chakra-fueled shadows without waiting for a response.

\---------------

The caravan left Aoukouchou around noon, after a profitable morning of trade and haggling. Yukiko had introduced Seichi to a factor in the cloth trade with whom she did occasional business on her cousin's behalf, but Ryouma-san had nothing currently in stock that Yuichiro wanted, and vice versa, so they came away with nothing but gossip and the aftertaste of good tea.

"It keeps surprising me how little actual business is involved in business," Seichi remarked as he swung up onto a communal wagon's front seat beside Yukiko. He attempted to drop his arm across her shoulders. She ducked out from under the gesture. "You break my heart, Yuki-chan!" he said, then added in a lower tone, "Your contact seemed overly interested in news from Konoha."

"Mmm. He didn't know anything specific, judging by how vague his questions were, but I don't think Intelligence can keep word of the massacre clamped down for much longer," Yukiko agreed. "It's obvious that _something_ went down, at least if you pay attention to schedules and personnel patterns. And people in Fire Country do pay attention to Konoha. It isn't safe not to."

"So long as they don't pay too much attention," Seichi said. "Otherwise Anbu might start paying attention back."

"Pointed attention, I assume," Yukiko said. She glanced around. Nobody was walking on either side of the wagon, but she wrapped the reins around her wrist and set up a distraction veil just in case. When she turned back to Seichi, his eyes had gone cold and he had a quartet of playing cards fanned between his fingers like kunai.

"There's no danger! I just wanted to talk about the mission for a few minutes," Yukiko said. "I'm not worried about gathering information or keeping our covers. I've been doing that since I was a genin. But I'd like a better idea of how the assassination part will go. Obviously we can't make specific plans until we know what we're facing, but what should I expect in general terms? And how can I be most helpful to you and Kurenai?"

Seichi didn't precisely relax, but the tension in his posture and chakra shifted subtly: a predator idly watching a game trail rather than one actively stalking prey. "Generally speaking, we want to create one of two scenarios," he said as he shuffled the four cards into the rest of his suddenly visible deck. "Either I get a minute alone with the target, or I get a clear shot in a public location where a sudden death will create enough ambient chaos to divert suspicion away from our team. In both cases your job is to act as distraction."

Yukiko frowned. "That seems reasonable enough. But won't the assassination itself be obvious enough for Amane's guards to lock the immediate area down? How will you get away?"

Seichi's smile glinted like sun on ice. He collapsed his deck into a single pile, then held up one card: the king of spades. "The only assassin you know is Hatake Kakashi. Right?"

Yukiko nodded.

"He gets assigned when Konoha needs to make a statement." Seichi flipped the card around; instead of the patterned back Yukiko expected, the two of hearts now faced forward. After a second, Seichi fanned the two of spades, diamonds, and clubs out from behind it. "I get assigned when plausible deniability is more important. I can't set up something completely undetectable within our likely timeframe, but I know how to maintain a cover persona and how to avoid both obvious wounds and chakra residue. Combine that with a distraction, and I should be able to buy just enough time to give myself an alibi for the apparent time of death."

Yukiko frowned again. "Okay. I'll bite. How do you kill someone in under a minute without leaving evidence?"

"Ah." Seichi's smile vanished, leaving nothing but cold. "Push your illusion out to both sides for a few seconds," he said.

Puzzled, Yukiko closed her eyes and expanded the little bubble of illusion until it brushed the trees on either side of the road. When she opened them, Seichi collapsed his fan of cards back to a singleton and flipped it around again, this time revealing the ace of spades. Then he flicked it over his shoulder in an apparently idle motion.

It should have fluttered down to be crushed under the wagon's wheels.

Instead, a massive tree branch crashed to the ground twenty meters away, sliced free with surgical precision.

Nobody else noticed.

"It's easier when the paper itself has some structure, but I can do that with any scrap," Seichi said. "It's a partial reconstruction of a battle technique developed in Hidden Rain. The original is much more versatile, but my version requires only minimal chakra use and is therefore better suited for assassination. Furthermore, because that chakra isn't structured into a formal jutsu, it dissipates without leaving a recognizable signature. Up close and personal I can make a cut small and fine enough that it will hardly bleed on the outside regardless of what happens inside the target's body. In the open, the apparent lack of a weapon causes confusion in and of itself, and I can make a kill shot from almost any distance so long as I have line-of-sight."

Huh. "Ame could do that," Yukiko said absently, most of her attention focused on pulling her genjutsu back in without accidentally dispelling it altogether. "Not the paper thing, I've never heard of that before. But the improbable aim. She said it was a clan thing."

Seichi shrugged and answered the implied question. "It's not a bloodline limit yet, but give it a few generations and we'll see. Fuuma tend to have wind affinities that manifest in similar knacks, and we train extensively to enhance them."

"That doesn't sound like Ame -- not the training part," Yukiko said. "She was always trying to get me and Kasumi to ditch practice sessions with Hoshi-sensei and do silly things instead." Seichi made an inquiring noise, so she continued: "We hated that about her at first. Kasumi and I were both civilian-born and felt we had to be better than the best in order to get half as far, and it seemed like Ame didn't understand that being shinobi-born gave her a huge advantage over us."

She twitched the reins, redirecting the left-hand mule's attention back to the road and its job. "But after a while, we realized she stopped us from training constantly _because_ she knew we had to work harder than she did. She wanted to make sure we didn't burn out. And every time she dragged us around town, she introduced us to at least one useful person -- supplier, mission control agent, whatever -- who'd treat us better once they knew we were connected to your clan. I still go to the same smith she did when I need to restock my kunai, and he still tells me to remind Ame she was running late with her bill payments whenever I stop by the memorial stone."

"That does sound like my cousin," Seichi said. "She was always late with gifts, too. We used to joke about it -- say things like, 'Oh, Uncle Toushirou, I see that something important happened three months ago!' if we saw someone holding a package with her calligraphy on the label."

The warmth in his voice didn't match the slightly numb tiredness she'd started to associate with Seichi being himself, but it was an even worse fit for the assassin or the aggressive sociability he put on as Tsukene. Surprised, Yukiko turned toward him -- but if his expression had ever changed, the evidence was gone. Only chill and impersonal assessment remained behind his eyes: the assassin face up once more.

"My cousin's quirks, entertaining though they were, aren't relevant to our mission," he said. "Did you have any other questions?"

Yukiko glanced forward to where Naruto and Sasuke were walking in the weeds at the side of the road, one gesticulating wildly and the other doing his best to pretend he was alone. She bit her lip, and carefully didn't look back toward Seichi.

"Mostly how I'm going to be an effective distraction when I also have to keep an eye on the kids and make sure they don't get in the way," she said. "But we can work that out once we're in Tengai and know what our covers will be. For now, we might as well enjoy the sunshine." She dropped the distraction jutsu as she spoke.

"An idea after my own heart, Yuki-chan!" Seichi said, sliding smoothly back into his cover persona, and once again attempted to sling an arm around her shoulder.

This was going to be a long trip.

\---------------

"So," Kakashi said lightly, as he crouched over the prone body of the skinny, hotheaded Volcano jounin. "You said you found some spies four days ago. Tell me about them."

Sukkiro glared upward and, to Naga's amazement, managed not to say anything.

For five seconds. Then he began another rant about Gouzen-sama's honor.

"This isn't getting us anywhere," Kafunnokaze grumbled from across the row of unconscious prisoners. His hands shook slightly from exhaustion and blood loss as he wrapped bandages around Suisen's burns. Kohaku sprawled on Suisen's other side, uninjured but apparently drained from staying underground so long. Suisen combed the fingers of her free hand through his hair.

Naga's genin team had never been close like that. She and Tsukihime hadn't been either, but she thought they'd been getting there. Now they never would.

It hurt to think about that, so she didn't.

"Knock him out and move on to someone else," Kafunnokaze continued over Sukkiro's interminable spiel, "or pull out that genjutsu your eye's supposed to help with and see if he's more cooperative when he thinks bugs are crawling out from under his fingernails."

"An oddly specific threat," Kakashi said. "But no, I think a simple gag will be enough to save our ears. Two concussions in short order creates too much risk of accidental death or permanent brain injury, as does genjutsu strong enough to smash mental defenses without the benefit of surprise or an extensive interrogation period. Breaking Sukkiro-san, however annoying he is, would guarantee retaliation, and I'd prefer to leave Volcano Country without a hunting party on our trail. Wouldn't you agree, Anei-san?"

Naga jerked around to stare at the other Volcano jounin, who'd apparently awakened without attracting anyone's attention. Damn. She should've been keeping better watch, not getting distracted by Kakashi's lackadaisical interrogation tactics and might-have-beens.

Anei moved her fingers away from her now faintly singed bonds and sighed. "Sukkiro's a twit. But yes. We'd hunt you for that; honor demands as much. Honor is, however, less specific about a trade of information."

"Mmm," Kakashi said, finally turning to face her. "Here's a thought! I tell you what we need to know, you tell me what _you_ need to know, and we'll bargain from there."

Anei looked at her own bonds, then at the drugged and trussed-up bodies of her students and Sukkiro's squad, then back at Kakashi with pointedly raised eyebrows. "Bargain. Sure."

Kakashi shrugged and crinkled his one visible eye into a smile. "I've survived worse negotiating positions. I'm sure you'll do fine. But I'll go first, which gives you the advantage when aiming your own questions. So. Where were these alleged spies found? Were they alive then, and if so, are they still alive now? Why do you think we're connected to them? Was there any sign of another person involved in the situation?"

"An interesting set of questions," Anei said.

"I will have you brought up before the elders as a traitor if you--" Sukkiro began.

Kohaku leaned forward and calmly stuffed the man's own scarf into his mouth, muffling the rest of his objection. Then he slumped back against Suisen's side and began examining his kunai for nicks.

Anei sighed again. "You know what? I don't have the patience to do the whole tremors and ash spouts game today. Let's cut straight to the eruption. We know Hidden Leaf was spying on us because the spies in question were wearing your symbol and carried characteristic traits from two of your major clans. But I won't condemn you for doing to us what we do right back when we can spare the resources. You said you're in pursuit of an S-class missing-nin?"

"I did say that," Kakashi agreed.

"I haven't personally seen any such person, but someone with at least jounin-level skills passed through this region four days ago," Anei said. "He killed your spies, and all three of the Inuzuka's dogs. Then he moved them to one of our outlying traps, which he set off, and ambushed our first response team. He took advantage of our subsequent mobilization to enter Kokuyougan fortress where Gouzen-sama was staying, at which point he stole a messenger hawk and sent it to an unknown location.

"He made fools of us and our lord, and I want him dead. I'll count his execution as fair payment for this information," she finished, and smiled. "Sukkiro, now!"

Ashy darkness swept over the clearing.

When sunlight began to filter through the leaves again, all eight Volcano-nin were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm fudging a little with the sand-to-glass trick -- the melting point of pure silica/sand is about 1700°C, which is extremely improbable for anyone to create even with handwavey magic powers -- but hey. Rule of Cool. *grin*
> 
> As for the heat convection issue... I went to a glass-blowing demonstration at the [Corning Museum of Glass](http://www.cmog.org/) a few years back. It is perfectly possible to hold and maneuver a lump of molten glass at one end of a stick and not burn yourself, even without handwavey magic protection. And that stuff gets _hot_ \-- not nearly as bad as pure silica, but the melting point of soda lime glass is still about 500-600°C, which means it's incredibly dangerous even after it solidifies. The demo guy made a bowl, knocked it off the pipe, and dropped a crumpled sheet of paper inside. The paper went up in brilliant flames in barely a second.
> 
> You really, really, _really_ do not want molten glass to touch your skin or clothes.


End file.
